


Stopping By Woods

by Sylvia_Bond



Series: Lilacs [2]
Category: Dark Shadows (1966)
Genre: Corporal Punishment, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-21
Updated: 2012-11-21
Packaged: 2017-11-19 05:45:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/569755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvia_Bond/pseuds/Sylvia_Bond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this sequel to Lilacs in Bloom, Victoria contemplates Barnabas' courtship of her and is shocked when he tells her that Willie is carrying a torch for her. He warns her to be careful, at which point she becomes rather more aware of Willie than she should. And then bad things happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stopping By Woods

The air around the Old House was crystalline in the dusk of autumn, sharp with memories of the storm that had just past, and whispering of the blasts of winter to follow from the sea. She reached up to knock on the door, pulling her scarf closer beneath her chin, inhaling the salt-scented air and shaking her head at Carolyn's foolishness. 

___You won't get me up there_ , Carolyn had said, pretending to shiver and rubbing her arms with her hands. _Not this time of year. Besides, Cousin Barnabas has been in a bad mood, to hear Mrs. Johnson tell of it, since Willie was trapped two days up at that motel with you last week._

Here Carolyn had sniggered, probably at her own private musings of whatever hanky panky might have gone on. Although she could not have thought for a second that any actually had, seeing as part of the hanky panky would have had to involve Miss Victoria Winters. 

Waiting in the dusk, Victoria hoped that Mr. Collins wouldn't be overly upset at her present request, brought about by her employer's insistence.

 __ _Get that car overhauled_ , Roger Collins had told her over the brandy he'd poured himself before, during, and after dinner. _It's high time it was done. And take Loomis with you. Whatever tomfoolery he was up to before he came here, he sure has a way with garage mechanics. He'll scare them out of trying to cheat a Collins._

Not thinking the most logical thing: the fact that the car belonged to someone from the Collins family would be enough to keep that from happening.

Sometimes she felt she was the only sane person in the house. 

A gust of wind tossed the tail ends of her scarf along her face and pushed her skirt hard against her thighs. She was about to knock again when she heard footsteps in the house, like the slow, far away echo of a loose board in a storm. Then the door was opened, shedding a yellow-grey light on the front porch, casting the smell of damp and woodrot and the ever-present ash and dust of fires that never went out and the shed of life that landed on every surface. She inhaled this now, smiling at the handsome, tall regalness that was Barnabas Collins. 

He did look peeved, as if he expected her to be someone else, brows drawn together, his eyes dark. When he saw that it was she, his face brightened, as it perpetually seemed to do whenever he saw her, and he was, inside of a second, the pleasant, somewhat serious man she was coming to know. Tipping his head in a bow, he welcomed her inside the house with a gesture of his hand, wave and welcome all at once. She stepped across the threshold, peeling back her scarf and letting it drop to her shoulders. 

"Miss Winters," he said in ringing tones, "how welcome you are on this windy evening. I do not think we will get a storm for some days, but when it arrives, it will set the most recent one to shame."

As it often was when she was with Barnabas Collins, she felt as if she'd stepped back in time. His manners contrasted with everyone else's that she knew. And it always made her smile.

"I think you are right," she said, thinking how earnest he was in his effort to make her feel at ease. "But hopefully, in the meantime, we'll have ourselves a nice Indian summer."

"Indian summer?" he asked, motioning with his hand that they should step into the Front Room. A fire was burning in the fireplace, snapping away at the chill and damp, sending flickering lights against the wallpaper, moving the shadows of the furniture around on the floor.

"Yes, Indian summer…." She looked at his puzzled expression, it was as if she'd suddenly started talking in a language he did not quite know, and there was a stern air about him as if he were going to start scolding her for it. "You know, just when you think winter has started, but it gets warm again and the sky is hazy, and the leaves start falling in earnest."

He was nodding, but seemed distant for a second, as if she'd reminded him of something else. Something more distant than the room they were in. "Ah, yes, Indian summer, Willie has told me of it…for a moment, I thought--" He shrugged off the thought. "Never mind. I am familiar with the weather you describe, and quite lovely it is, too."

"I expect," she said, by way of apology, "that in England they call it something else?"

"Yes," he said, leading her toward the fire, "I expect they do. Won't you take off your coat, Miss Winters, and join me in a glass of wine?"

He wanted her to stay, that much was obvious. As he always did, unexpected call or not, he always wanted her to stay. She felt drawn by it, the wanting. The courtship. It was something she'd never experienced before, not at the Foundling Home, for certain, and not in any encounters in the village of Collinsport. To most, she was a working girl, in plain brown and blue dresses, sensible shoes, a secondhand coat that Mrs. Stoddard had given her. Camel hair, to be sure, and while Victoria suspected that Mrs. Stoddard had bought it for her new and had lied about it being second hand, that was the story that had gone around. And so, she was, simply, the governess in a secondhand coat. 

But to Barnabas, she was a lady. He was pouring wine for her now, disregarding her silence, or taking it as acquiescence. Crystal decanter, gold rimmed goblets, and all for a casual glass of wine for a solitary guest arrived unannounced on an autumn evening. When he turned to look at her, a glass in each hand, she could see the glow in his eyes that she was becoming convinced, over time, existed because she was in the room. She never saw him look like that at Carolyn, that much was certain.

But the glow dimmed when he saw that she had not taken off her coat. 

"Why, Miss Winters--" He stopped, not wanting, it seemed, to find fault in her in any way. But he was disappointed, too, and he tipped his chin down, as if chiding himself for being so forward. "I do apologize, I simply assumed…well, indeed, you are on an important errand of some kind, and here am I wanting you only to tarry a while with me." With a smile he seemed to resign himself to her leaving, and it was that which prompted her to take off her coat and walk through to the foyer to hang it on the rack. When she returned, more candles had been lit and the room was as bright and welcoming as a velvet-draped bower.

Barnabas held out a glass to her. She took it, and tipping the rim of it with his glass in salute, took a small sip.

"Won't you sit down, Miss Winters, and rest after your ramble through the woods?"

She was more used to fetching and carrying for others. But each visit with Barnabas Collins was teaching her to enjoy being waited on hand and foot. Even if it was not something she was used to.

She sat in the chair closest to the fire, knowing from past experience that if she did not, he was apt to argue with her and scold her to take the best seat in the house for herself. And then write a note the next day, delivered by Willie Loomis, to apologize for taking such a firm tone with her. All with a graceful charm that drew her in like the coaxing curve of a newly budded rose.

He sat in the seat opposite from her and set his wine glass on the little round table. "So, what brings you to the Old House on such a night?" Hands steepled in front of him, eyes open and watching her.

"Well, actually, Roger Collins sent me to ask you a favor."

"A favor?"

"Yes, and it's rather a big one, I'm afraid."

"There is no favor," said Barnabas, spreading his hands wide as if offering a benediction, "too big for a family member. Or a charming occupant of the Great House."

Of course he would say that. With a dignity of promise and goodwill, as if he'd waited for just this minute to be able to help her out. 

"Well, it's Willie Loomis, you see."

"Willie?" he asked, his eyes narrowing, as if he were confused. "What about him?"

"We need him to help me."

His eyebrows rose as if he could not imagine such a thing. 

"You see, when I was driving last week to pick up Carolyn at the airport, well, you remember."

"Yes, indeed I do."

"Mr. Collins has since decided that the car needed a complete overhaul, you see, and we thought that Willie, being, well, that he could keep them from taking advantage of me at the garage."

"Wouldn't…" Barnabas' voice trailed off as he paused to look at the fire. And then at her, his eyes dark. "Wouldn't the fact that the car belongs to a Collins be enough to keep you from harm at the garage?"

She could only shrug. "I think the garage has changed hands recently, and Mr. Collins, well, he's been busy at the cannery…."

"And is unable to take up your cause. I see."

"Yes, that's it exactly." She took a sip of wine, where even the tiniest taste washed away her nervousness. She'd not realized how anxious Roger's idea had made her. In his way, he wanted to look out for her, but, as was typical of him, what he thought would make her life easier actually put her on the outside, looking in. Asking for favors. Borrowing the power of others.

"And he felt," Barnabas continued, "that Willie, with his street experience, could make sure, at least for this first visit, that the Collins standard of excellence should be upheld, is that it?"

"Yes." She nodded now, feeling the heat of the fire along one side of her face, reaching up to feel the hot silk of her hair. As it always was, the wine and the fire quite relaxed her, and she could finally feel her shoulders start to fall against the back of the chair. "And if it would be alright with you, he could come with me tomorrow to make sure. Mr. Collins is, well, he--" She stopped, not wanting to criticize.

"And Cousin Roger wants this done as soon as possible, is that it?"

Nodding silently, she felt herself smile. As it always was, Barnabas to the rescue. How secure he was, how confident, knowing what she meant to say without her having to say it. 

Barnabas sat up in his wingback chair, drawing himself into a straight line, nodding in return that _yes_ , he would do this for her. Arrange that it should be so. "I will call Willie now, and we will set the arrangements."

"Oh--" She stopped. 

"What is it, my dear?"

"Isn't he having his supper, I mean, I smell food cooking from down the hall."

"It is no matter," he said, flicking the backs of his fingernails against the arm of the chair. "He can eat it just as well, later."

With that, he stood and went to the hallway. Called for his servant, and all the while she tried to understand why this made her feel uncomfortable. Certainly she'd never heard Willie complaining about his situation, or have anything much to say about it at all. From the time she had known him, Willie had never taken pains to hide his opinion of things or people. Until he had started working for Mr. Collins, that is. At which point, he'd become rather silent on his view of the world. Perhaps it was something he'd learned, some force of discretion. Some new restraint copied directly from his boss. 

Before she could figure it out, Willie arrived, his footsteps, quick and urgent, preceding him by mere seconds. Carrying a dishtowel in one hand, bundled and stained as if he'd been using it as a napkin. Collar open, hair damp and combed back as if he'd just washed up prior to sitting down to his meal. When he saw her sitting there, his jaw dropped in total astonishment and not a little dismay. It was almost obvious by the way he turned his face away from her that he'd not expected to see her, did not want to see her. Not the reception she was used to getting from Willie, not recently. Except that it was. He'd been ignoring her ever since they'd returned home after the blizzard.

Then Willie turned his eyes to his boss, and the circles of candlelight in the hallway hid his expression so well, she thought she'd imagined his lack of welcome. Surely that couldn't be it. 

"What is it, Barnabas?" he asked, voice low. As it usually was when he was talking to Barnabas. Not timid. More, cautious. Funny how she'd not noticed it till this moment.

"You will come in and help me make arrangements for your attendance upon Miss Winters tomorrow," said Barnabas, gesturing to the chair where she sat. He walked towards her and Willie followed, one half step behind, eyes locked on Barnabas' shoulder. Towel twisting in his hands. The rush of their passing moved the candlelight in the sconces to flicker and bend. 

Barnabas stopped before her and reached for her hand. Clasped it between his large, cool palms. And raised a smile to her as he spoke to Willie. "Miss Winters has need of your counsel at the garage for repairs to her vehicle."

A slow nod was his reply, but Victoria could see that Willie was waiting for more information before agreeing out loud, and that Barnabas was going to give it to him.

"You will convey Miss Winters to and from the garage, as she needs it, and discuss with the mechanic the repairs that are needed. A full overhaul, I believe Cousin Roger said?" This last addressed to her and she was quick to reply.

"Yes, that's what he said. It was very kind of him to offer, but I'm beginning to think that I'm causing a great deal of trouble."

"No trouble, I assure you, Miss Winters. Is that not right, Willie?"

Willie started to nod, then opened his mouth. "Y-yeah, that's right. No trouble."

"You see?" asked Barnabas pressing her hand a little harder now. "Willie is happy to do anything that you require."

Her host cast a glance to Willie, and Victoria caught the flicker of something else there that she could not translate into meaning. Probably just the usual warning to mind his manners. Or to take extra special care of her, as Barnabas himself would have done. Probably nothing more than that.

"As am I, my dear," finished Barnabas, drawing her hand to him as if he meant to kiss it. A quick flinch from her, involuntary and sharp, stopped him. Not that she minded, of course she didn't. But he usually only attempted this when they were alone. Not with an audience of one. Willie Loomis, eyes large and round and dark and watching her. It almost made her uncomfortable. Almost. But not as uncomfortable as the thought of taking him away from his regular work. She knew what it was like to be called upon for a special errand, only to find out, upon her return, that she'd left some even more important task unfinished for someone else.

"I appreciate all of this," she said, putting her wine glass down on the little round table next to her, pushing her hands against the arms of the chair to rise. She could barely do this, Barnabas was standing so close. Willie moved back almost instantly, and Barnabas a second later. As if he could not bear to see her go so soon. Which was flattering, in a way, although uncomfortable. She found herself drawn to it though, as she always was, even as she fought against the surge of pleasure. It was nice to be wanted.

And nicer still to see Willie dip his head, looking at her, eyes dark and serious in the candlelight. The color of blue stones washed grey by the sea. Some hair slipping over his forehead, and his soft, careful reply, "It's no problem. I'm happy to do it."

"You will meet with Miss Winters at the garage, and tend to anything she wants, is that clear?"

"Yes, Barnabas," said Willie, his face turning in Barnabas' direction, though Vicki couldn't be entirely sure that Willie was actually looking at his boss.

"And you will convey her to and fro as necessary, as well as tend to your regular chores."

"Yes, Barnabas," said Willie again. She noticed his hands were clenched tight around the towel, so tight she saw the cloth begin to come soundlessly apart. And his hands were shaking.

Then Barnabas was taking her hand and leading her to the foyer, a smile softening his sharp features, white in the darkness of the hallway. A hand touching her back, his fingertips drawing a faint circle along the cloth of her dress, like a little electric shock. 

"You will let me know," he was saying, taking down her coat and helping her into it, "if there is ought you need and do not receive tomorrow. I need to know that you are well taken care of, Miss Winters, though I am unable to assist you myself."

"I will," she said. 

Pulling the scarf out of the coat pocket she placed it on her head and tied it under her chin. Almost loath to go out into the crisp wind, even though the fine wine was simmering in her veins and would keep her warm. She seldom drank even this much at the Great House, but the Old House was different. It was always different here, like velvet to silk. Both fine, but the Old House had a constant current of the past shifting through the air, never letting her forget how it had a place, a constant, deep-rooted place. Something she did not have, and never would. Unless she could find it. Connect with it, in such a place.

Willie stood behind Barnabas in the hallway, a candle catching the gleam of his eye, like a secret star in the dark. The rest of his face was dusted with shadows, and she could not tell if he tore at his towel or whether his hands were at rest. Only that he stood still, watching her. She didn't think he was smiling.

"Thank you, Mr. Collins, I appreciate everything you do for me. As does Roger Collins."

"It is nothing," said Barnabas, taking her hand now and kissing it as he had wanted to do earlier. 

"My car will be the happier for it," she said, feeling the smile as she thought of the memory, "and no need for Willie to rescue me, even if there is another blizzard."

"No," said Barnabas, straightening, rising, his shoulders going back. He let go of her hand. "No need for that."

"Goodnight, Mr. Collins," she said to him. Then nodded to Willie standing in the half-dark. "Goodnight, Willie. See you tomorrow."

There was a pause. Then he said, "Yeah, tomorrow." 

She turned to go, shutting the door behind her, feeling the last warmth of the house before the wind and the darkness cut into her. Hearing the low tones of Barnabas to his servant, "Come with me, Willie." Obviously, they had a lot to do.

The last of the twilight had faded and full night had fallen. Vicki let her memory lead her through the woods to the Great House. In spite of herself, she was looking forward to her day with Willie Loomis.

*

There was a brilliant fog as she stood on the sidewalk in front of Manny's Garage where she had brought her car. Around her were the sounds of the men starting up their work. One of them had asked her if she needed help, but had left her alone when she told them she was waiting for Willie Loomis. As had everyone else. She didn't like the garage, it smelled of grease and something old and dirty, but she supposed that was why the last owner had gone out of business. There were signs that the new owner was making an effort to clean up, the pile of tires she remembered always being there was gone now, replaced by a bright, new sign that told of prices and services. And the men wore clean uniforms, so she supposed that was something. You couldn't turn an old garage into a going concern overnight.

Nor could Willie turn the Old House into an historic show home, though it often seemed that was what he was trying to do. Always working hard, reaching for some invisible goal in his head, and now today, he would be taken away from that. Would he appreciate the break? Or would he resent her for it? She did not know. 

She hoped he did. It was a break for her, too. Carolyn was taking David for the day, and while Vicki didn't believe that the times tables was going to get covered by noon as they should, the break might do the boy good, as well. 

A truck pulled up in the yard, and she recognized it as Willie's instantly, even though there was a bit of fog between them. Old and white, with a touch of rust around the tire wells, it was, still, more reliable than her car. He stopped the truck, and got out. Patted his pockets to make sure he had his keys, and walked over toward her. Looking like he'd not slept much, or very well, and that maybe he'd missed his breakfast. Which wasn't really likely seeing as it was past nine o'clock.

"Am I late?" he asked her, stepping up beside her. "My alarm clock didn't go off, and well, without the sun…."

"You're right on time." She smiled, thinking how he was, in his own way, as courteous as Barnabas Collins. Rougher, of course, without the polish, but his eyes were gentle as he looked at her, anxious that his tardiness should have caused her any inconvenience. 

"You sure?" he asked, wanting to be sure. 

"Yes," she replied, smiling even in the chill of the morning. How kind of him to worry.

He smiled in return. It lit up his eyes for a second, and then he turned to look into the depths of the garage. "You wanna come in with me or stay out here?"

"I'll come in."

He led the way, the flex of his shoulders coming back in a stance she recognized in Joe Haskell and even Roger Collins. The position that said, _I am not to be fooled with so don't even try_. Funny how Barnabas' shoulders never did that, or maybe it was because they were always that way. These thoughts occupied her while she listened to Willie describe what was wrong with the car, or what might be wrong, to the man behind the counter. The only part she understood was the bit about the oil pan, because Roger Collins had spent a great deal of time one evening spelling the whole thing out for her.

"That's been fixed, now, so don't go messing with it," Willie was saying. "The oil is good. Just look at the engine and the ball bearings, and new tires. Put the best you got on."

Vicki raised her hand to touch him on the shoulder and he instantly turned around, eyebrows raised in expectation, hair falling across his eyes. He pushed it back, still looking at her.

"I don't think--" she began, and Willie was shaking his head.

"Only the best for a Collins," he said, "an' you work for a Collins, an' so." He shrugged, and that was the end of it. She could hardly argue with Willie, not in a garage, not in front of three strange men. Besides Barnabas had probably given him instructions, knowing Barnabas, about what should be done and to what lengths Willie should go to make sure it was done. Even to the point of hushing her in public.

"Okay, Willie, you know best." 

A little tip of his head and he was back to the counter, signing papers and handing over the keys. 

"All set," he said, turning to her, shoulders relaxing back down. Probably didn't even know he was doing it, but it was interesting to see just the same. "We can pick it up at five, they said."

She responded with a silent nod, following him out to his truck, and waiting, while the fog dissipated in a little breeze around her, for him to unlock and open the door for her. Getting in was a little difficult, as the truck was high off the ground. He didn't offer a hand, though he looked, oddly enough, as though he wanted to. Instead he simply watched as she pulled herself in, then shut the door gently behind her. Head down as he walked around the front of the truck, climbing in, keeping his eyes to the front. She'd not made him this nervous, she was sure, the last time they'd driven together, or even at the hotel. It was as if a frost had taken him over; he kept his eyes focused toward the front of the truck as he got in, starting the engine without looking at her, and driving out of the parking lot as if he didn't have a passenger with him.

"Where can I take you, Miss Vicki? Barnabas said anywhere you want to go."

"Home, I guess." She settled against the back of the seat and tightened her scarf, letting her hands fall folded in her lap. But she didn't want to go home. Outside her window, as the truck rolled along, was miles and miles of autumn in between the pockmarked bare trees, where the storm had taken a part of the fall foliage with it. The fog was lifting and behind that shone a brilliant sun, the spokes of lapis sky bright through the orange lace of the trees and white clouds. Only in Maine had she seen that particular color. And only at this time of year, when the scattershot of orange and brown and yellow and gold made such a contrast that the sky looked bluer than it actually was. Than it actually could be. It was an illusion, she knew, but it was brilliant just the same.

"What is it, Vicki?" Willie asked, and she turned to look at him.

"What do you mean?"

"You're looking at somethin', and you made a little sound. Everythin' okay?"

He drove along the road, with two hands on the wheel, as he had during the blizzard, more along the yellow line on the outside than the white stripe in the middle, swerving every now and then as if he knew exactly where the bumps were, and how far a jog he needed to make to avoid them. But didn't he see the fall? The sky? The sparkles of gold as the leaves fell in the wind of the truck's passing? No. His eyes were glued to the road, with only a single glance in her direction. A shame, really.

"We should go for a walk in the woods," she said, smiling to herself. Sillyness, but there it was. An impulse. Not something she often gave into, and woods were typically only something that David hid in and that had to be searched till he was found.

"A wha'?"

"A walk. In the woods."

"With _you_?"

He seemed almost horrified. The truck swerved, and he tightened his hands on the wheel.

"Yes, with me. I suppose you'd rather be walking with a tall red-headed beauty, or a--" She was joking, of course, but out of the corner of her eye, she could see him shaking his head.

"Oh, no, no. I just thought--well, that you'd want to get back to Collinwood an' all."

That wasn't what he'd been going to say, she felt, but he was being nice, as always. Much nicer than he'd been when he'd first arrived at Collinwood. So much so that she sometimes had difficulty comparing the two men. It was as if he was two different people.

"There's a wooded area up ahead," she said, pointing. "And a path that follows one of those streams that goes to the sea."

She felt his eyes on her, one hard look, and then back at the road. 

"Look, there's a place where you can park," she said. We can walk through the woods and still be back at Collinwood before lunch. They're not expecting me till then."

He was slowing. The truck was slowing, but it didn't feel like it was going to stop.

"Please, Willie? It's such a beautiful day, and I feel like I want to get as much warmth and sun as I can before the winter sets in."

She didn't know what it was that she had said, but she felt the truck speed up and the place she had been pointing to whipped past them before she had time to protest.

He drove on for a moment, concentrating on the road, his face grim. Then he said, "It's colder than it looks, you know. You don't have the coat for it. Barnabas wouldn't like it if you caught cold on account of me. 'Sides, I got work to do."

Her first impulse was to argue with him about it. Her coat was fine, she wasn't a child who didn't know how to dress for the weather. She wanted to walk in the woods on this beautiful day and why wouldn't he let her? Taking a breath, she realized that if she wasn't a child, then she couldn't whine about it either. If he had to get back to work, and she had to curtail her own desires, then that was that. Some things couldn't be helped, was all. 

She sighed. Work awaited her as well.

*

The Collins clan departed at mid-afternoon in the brisk wind, with Vicki waving them off from the front archway. Roger Collins had been called to Boston on business, and Carolyn and David were joining him for an impromptu holiday. No consideration was given for the expense of suddenly-bought train fare or, either, for the regimen of David's schoolwork. No, off they would go, expensive leather bags packed with far too much clothing, Mr. Collins clutching the handmade briefcase that surely contained important paperwork to be reviewed and signed. As she turned into the doorway, pushing the heavy, solid wood closed against the sprightly afternoon, she saw Mrs. Stoddard lingering in the front foyer. 

"Some peace and quiet, at last," said Mrs. Stoddard, tipping her head back to sigh. Eyes lingering on the art along the walls, the portrait of the original Barnabas Collins, and then on Vicki. "And you'll have plenty of time for that doctor's appointment in Bangor, now, won't you?"

"Yes, I will. Thank you." Tipping her head, in some gratitude, thinking that somehow Mrs. Stoddard might have arranged this unexpected vacation from the shoulder-tensing task of keeping young David in his seat in the schoolroom when the air outside stirred with scent and the leaves burst forth with flames. 

She watched Mrs. Stoddard head toward the back study, the smaller one, with wood paneled walls, and the cozy fire. The small bottle of brandy and a crystal glass tucked behind one of the bigger books that no one looked at any more. It was uncertain whether her boss would look at old family albums or stare into the golden fire. Either way, Vicki suddenly found herself with time on her hands. Hours to go till Willie would be by to take her to pick up her car. The afternoon fine, with no hint of rain, and the sky as blue as a sapphire gem. 

She would go for a walk, then. On her own.

The first time she'd ventured into the woods on the Collins estate, some time ago, she'd been overwhelmed. The Foundling Home in New York had been bound by lilac trees, it was true, and somewhere beyond the vast walls of grey and brown stone, Central Park was purported to burst with every kind of plant imaginable. She'd never been near it. Had never ventured further from the confines of the home than what was allowable by the sisters. Which was to say, not very far. 

Her scope of the world had been bound by the small neighborhood in which the home was situated. Stone and cement, little corner shops, back alleys with shambled brick, constant noise, the occasional stunted tree. And the lilac bushes. Someone, some time past, had planted them, in a ring, just inside the tall, pointed iron fence. They grew lush, and someone was always threatening to cut them back, to make the founding home somewhat more orderly in nature, but no one ever did. Each spring, the blossoms would come out, purple, lilac, and white. Some lasting only a day or two, others weeks. The children had gathered them, tossed them about, the older girls soaking them in water to rinse their hair, or to twine in the button of a lapel. For weeks the smell of them permeated the halls of the Foundling Home, till at last the heat of summer baked it away. It happened every year, and by the time she left the home for Collinwood, to her spring was lilacs.

Her first walk into the woods after she'd arrived at her post had been in late fall, when the green leaves of summer had been replaced by the ochre and fire canopy overhead. Strange glossy-leaved plants spread as ground cover beside the path, in competition with spiny rough, red vines she could never discover the name of. Huge sweeping furs, their branches drooping down as if in anticipation of the first heavy snow. The path somewhat muddy and slippery beneath her feet. And the smells, she remembered that first time how many smells there were. None she could then identify, some dank, some bright, some pungent, all of them drifting into her lungs through her open mouth as if she could not get enough. Nothing like the greasy New York air; she walked and breathed and smiled. 

Now the smells were familiar though still unidentified as she headed up the long path that led from the Great House up to Widow's Hill. Another path led from Widow's Hill to the Old House. From there, from the back door of the kitchen of the Old House, still another path led back to the Great House, forming a big triangle that kept the two houses connected with each other and the pounding view of the sea. 

Near the lee of the hill were a tangle of rocks that she had to clamber over, wondering, as she always did, if these were the rocks that Josette had tumbled over on her way up to the cliffs as she made her desperate and sad attempt to escape the man who had been chasing her. Whoever that had been. But the day was far too sunny to be contemplating Josette and her sad fate for very long. 

Instead she looked out at the pounding blue sea spread before her, white waves, spilling, endless green foam on the black and jagged rocks. The smell of salt, coming up strong with the ceaseless breeze that whipped up the cliffs and into her face. Sending her hair streaming back, out of the confines of the ribbon she'd hastily tied. Vicki reached up to pull the ribbon down, letting her hair free, stuffing the ribbon in her pocket. Only a secondhand one, dull brown, in keeping with her sensible air as a governess. Wouldn't matter if she lost it, but the sisters had driven into her the sin of waste.

Not chill, but brisk. The edge of bite from the wind cupped her cheeks and slid behind the collar of her coat. Winters were hard in this part of the world, it seemed to her, at least last year's had been, but no one in the house had commented upon it in the least. Not even when, in early October, the snows had come for days and everyone had been trapped in their houses. Willie, she'd learned, had been on a trip for Barnabas to Bangor during that storm, and had almost been lost on the roads coming home. Three hours it had taken him to drive from Bangor to the door of the Old House, Mrs. Johnson had told her, though how he'd managed it at all in a whiteout no one knew. Vicki got some hint from the tone of Mrs. Johnson's voice that Barnabas had been beside himself waiting, and had dragged Willie from the cab of the truck as soon as it had pulled into the driveway, taking him into the kitchen and treating him for a near case of frostbite. No one else, at the Old House, however, ever spoke of it, and she never felt bold enough to ask.

The next snow like that was years away, people said. It never snowed like that two years in a row. Or five, or ten. Or even thirty. Though, just last week a blizzard had come through like an angry, live thing, catching her and her broken down car on the road. Oil leaking all around, and then Willie, in his disreputable looking but dependable truck, coming to a halt, his sea blue eyes serious, work roughened hands capable as he knelt on the snowy ground and checked for her, so that she wouldn't so much as have to get her hands dusty. He'd saved her from, at the very least, a very cold walk, and then some. What if Willie hadn't come along? What if? Carolyn had managed just fine stranded at the airport with, no doubt, half a dozen beaux to cater to her every spoiled whim. Men always went for blondes, even Willie, in the early days, had been quite taken with that pampered head of hair. But then, he'd made creepy advances on her as well as Carolyn, wanting to touch her, trapping her in the doorway, smiling the whole time, as if, given enough encouragement, she would surely fall to his charms.

So different now, he was. 

The sun was slanting through the trees, a huge swell of wind kicking across the tops of them, spilling the red and orange leaves down like colored snow. She felt that she might head down the other path, toward the Old House to meet Willie and save him the drive to the Great House. He would be hard at work, she knew, as he always seemed to be, sunup to sundown, and sometimes even past that. A changed man from the rogue who had stared at her like he wanted to divest her of all her clothes, and quickly too. Now, he was quite different. She turned up her collar and headed down the hill, through the open field, past the fir trees that behind them shielded the lilac tree that Willie had shared with her last spring. She always thought of it as _their_ tree, it was the only one on the estate, as she had discovered through her searches. Other lilacs existed along the back streets of Collinsport, in the poorer sections of town, so she knew that plenty grew around this part of Maine. But on the estate, it was the only one.

The Old House, long columns faded white and the small peak of roof that stuck out a bit over the little widow's walk, darker with slated roof, pushed its way past the trees, almost shouldering them out of the way, as if on purpose. As if it wanted to see her properly. As if a house had eyes, which was silly. She shrugged these thoughts off, and tried to comb her fingers through her hair. It was a mess, she knew it, but it would have to do. Willie wouldn't mind; she just hoped she didn't run into Barnabas looking so disheveled. He tended to see her, she felt, in such a ladylike light, that to dissuade him of this even for one second was unthinkable. 

She walked up to the back door, the one that led to the kitchen, and knocked. In days past, she might have walked right on in, but a few encounters with a Willie shaken in such a panic that he'd left the doors unlocked and that Barnabas might find out had taught her to at least pretend they were locked. The knock echoed in the empty rooms beyond and came back to her. Hollow. She tried again, and heard the steps coming toward her. Paced and quick, giving her the hint, before the door was even opened, that it was Willie rather than Barnabas, who was, no doubt, away on business, as he always seemed to be. 

The solid door, with its glazed thick glass pulled back on its hinges without a sound, and there stood Willie, hair hanging in his eyes, shoulders a thin, straight line in his flannel shirt, face without expression as he looked at her.

"Miss Vicki," he said. Toneless. 

"Hello, Willie," she said in reply. "I thought I'd save you the drive up to Collinwood."

"Uh," he said now. "Um…."

Somehow he was rattled by her unexpected appearance, for reasons she couldn't determine. His hands weren't covered by anything to show he'd been in the middle of something. No grease, or paint, or even a rag in his hand smelling of Brasso to indicate why he was standing there staring at her as if he didn't know her.

"Is it time, do you think? To head to the garage? Or too early?"

His jaw worked as he dipped his head down, his eyes in shadow for a brief dark flash, and she opened her mouth to ask if he was alright, when he said, "Sure, we can go now, if you like."

He turned away, leaving the door open, but not inviting her in as he sometimes did, when the wind was blustery, or the air sharp with cold. Not today, apparently. She imagined he was getting his keys and his wallet and jacket, and didn't feel he had time for any niceties. Within seconds he reappeared, closing and locking the door behind him, shoving past her, not rudely, but rushed. Preoccupied. Not looking at her, even as he strode up to his truck and opened the passenger door for her. Waited till she was settled in and closed it behind her. 

As he started up the truck and headed down the gravel lane towards the main road, she recalled the day that he had told her that he had no time for talk. She'd been standing in the doorway of the Old House, feeling chill from the cold that lingered even as the snow melted. Willie had not let her in, she recalled, but had been polite. And distant. Something had been wrong, but he'd refused to talk to her about it, and the warmth and friendship that had built up between them during their sojourn at the motel during a blizzard had frozen into nothingness. 

Well, he'd been busy, and so had she, and she hadn't seen much of him to miss it. Until now, in the confines of the truck that had once driven them to safety. The heater was on, he snapped it on, and she found herself staring at the back of his hand. Streaked with dirt, a thin scratch over the back of the knuckles. Back to the steering wheel it went, and as they drove along, she heard the same soft _click click_ sound that had been the constant background to their drive to and from Bangor. It sounded like it was in the heater, something loose in the fan, but Willie never seemed to notice it. He didn't notice it now. Or her either. If someone had told her months ago that she would feel despondent over the fact that Willie Loomis was ignoring her, she would have called them a lair. And something ruder as well. 

As they passed the limits of the village, she saw the clock on the bank. It was 4:15. 

"We'll be in good time," she said, letting her eyes dwell on the fan of clapboard houses, with their tidy lawns and black shutters.

"Huh?" 

She looked at him. "The clock on the bank, it says 4:15."

"Oh, yeah, okay."

With a little shrug, she settled back in her coat. Willie's truck was warm, with the smell of old foam rubber and the sharper one of rusted springs. He kept it clean, though. Tidy, always, no litter of old cups or paper wrapping from food eaten on the go. Though she knew he had to do it, had seen him in town one day, hustling out from the diner with food wrapped in paper. Watched him pull out of the parking lot and head down the street, one hand on the wheel, the other hand pushing the large end of a burger in his mouth. He hadn't seen her, and Carolyn, standing next to her on the sidewalk, had never even seen him. Had only poked her, and demanded to know whether Vicki thought that Mother would object to scarlet red shoes to go with the lacy black dress Carolyn had just bought. Vicki couldn't remember her answer, but she did know that the shoes had been bought and never worn. There was just no place to wear them in a village like Collinsport.

The wheels of the truck hupped over the bump in the parking lot as Willie pulled onto blacktop of the garage. She could see that her blue sedan was still up on jacks, and that no one was working on it. There were a few men milled around another car, and through the newly cleaned plate glass windows, she could see two men at the counter. One of them was on the phone.

"This doesn't look good," said Willie, surprising her with the edge to his voice.

"What is it?" she asked, though she thought she might already know the answer.

Willie parked the truck and she slid out, shutting the door behind her. She followed Willie into the office and stood next to him while they waited for someone to notice them. The air smelled like old tires, as it had before, but now with the bitter smell of strong soap that had been used once too many times but to no effect. 

"Hey," said Willie, his voice a snap cutting into the hum of the waiting room. For a moment silence, and then a man in a blue coverall came over to them.

"Can I help you?" he asked. His nametag said Vince.

"Yeah, Vince, I've come to check on the lady's car." With his hands on the edge of the counter, Willie tipped his fingers back to point at her. "Car for Miss Winters."

"Oh, yeah," said Vince. "Hang on, I'll get the boss."

He walked off, and she heard Willie mutter under his breath, "You _better_ get the boss."

She smiled to herself. He was so bold on her behalf, it seemed, though she had a feeling that for himself, he was not always so bold.

The manager came up to them, dressed in a button down white shirt with a nametag that said, Mr. Cooper, Manager. He looked like he was about to say, _can I help you_ , but then changed his mind.

"You Loomis?" he asked, instead.

"Yes, and this is Miss Winters, and we've come about her car. It's still up in the bay, though."

"Yes," said Mr. Cooper, "we tried to call, but--"

"But nothing. Is the car ready or not?"

"Look, Mr. Loomis, there was no phone, and--"

Willie interrupted him. "She works for the Collins family, you know them?"

With a long dark pause, Mr. Cooper stared at Willie, his expression saying very clearly that Willie was reminding him of something he was quite aware, and that perhaps the memory wasn't quite pleasant. Vicki never used the Collins' name during any of her transactions in the village. It smacked of trading on power, and it left a bad taste in her mouth whenever she would go out with Carolyn, who, of course, couldn't help doing it. Not so Willie. It seemed palatable enough to him.

"Mr. Collins ain't gonna like it, her car not being ready."

"I know that Mr. Loomis, but if you'll just let me explain--"

"Better start talkin'," said Willie.

"Willie," she said, stepping up to the counter. Mr. Cooper seemed to notice her standing there for the first time. Breathed a sigh that relaxed his face a little.

"Hello, Miss Winters, we got a lot of work done on your car today, but the fan belt needed replacing and we didn't have the one you needed in stock. That and the alternator. We've sent for them, from Bangor, and they should be here tomorrow. We'll have your car done by noon tomorrow with no problem. Will that be okay?"

She nodded. "Of course." Ignoring the hard edge in Willie's eyes, concentrating on Mr. Cooper, remembering only too late that she had a doctor's appointment the next day and how was she supposed to get there? She tugged on Willie's sleeve. "We'll be back tomorrow at noon," she said, stepping away from the counter. Everyone within earshot breathed a sigh of relief, it seemed, and the momentary chill and silence burbled up again into a normal workday feeling.

She turned on her heel, not looking to see if Willie was coming, knowing that he would be, feeling him walking behind her, steps soundless on the linoleum, a hand reaching out to grab the door for her. She pulled herself into the cab, tucking her skirt and coat beneath her thighs as he shut the door and walked around to the other side. Getting in, he was silent, the bravado gone to be replaced by the grim line of his mouth. 

His hands moved to put the key in the ignition and then stilled.

"He ain't going to like it your car not being ready," he said. Quiet, as if talking to himself.

"Well, that's hardly your fault, Willie," she replied. Waiting for him to start the car and head up the hill. When he didn't, she reached over and patted him on the shoulder, jerking back when he snapped to face her. For a moment, nothing moved. Remnants of something dark and sharp flared in his eyes as he looked at her. Breathed in and out slowly. Then he swallowed. His shoulders sagged as he slumped in his seat.

"I got instructions, see," he began, his hand coming up flat-palmed as if this would help her understand. "Instructions to bring your car back today. Not tomorrow."

"Can't you just explain it to him?" she asked, pulling her hair back over her shoulder as it slipped forward. "I'm sure he'll understand."

"He _won't_ ," said Willie, the stress in his voice rising to a pitch.

"But, Willie--"

"No, he ain't gonna like it at all," he said, his teeth clicking over the words. 

Vicki took a deep breath, looking at him, at the tautness of his jaw, and how his lips had gone white. He must care about his job beyond all reason, and there was nothing she could do but try and help. And he never wanted her help, especially when it had to do with his job. Even when she'd wanted to help explain things to Barnabas about the blizzard and the car, he'd refused her. It was getting to be too much.

"Look," she began, but noticed his chest was still heaving. "Look at me, Willie."

A pause filled the stillness of the truck. He looked at her, but slowly. Tipping his head to move the hair out of his eyes, his two hands clenched in fists on his lap.

"I will explain it to him. This is the garage's fault."

"He won't--"

"He _will_ ," she replied. "I'll make him understand. You won't loose your job over this, I promise."

To her surprise, he seemed to snicker under his breath. "My job," she heard, low, as if he didn't realize he was saying it.

"Just start the truck, Willie, and I promise you, I will talk to Mr. Collins until he understands."

With one last, heated blue glance at her, Willie started the truck. Shifted it into gear, and pulled out of the driveway. She could see that he didn't believe her, or maybe it was just the long shadows that were reaching over the trees as sunset came. Whatever the reason, his expression was dark, and his eyes, two voids in his face.

The air was dark around them by the time they pulled into the port-cochiere alongside the Old House. She wasn't surprised that they'd come directly there, though she heard the rustle of Willie's jacket as he turned to face her. Silent for a moment after he turned off the engine, the wind from the sea rising up to stroke the glass with damp fingers. 

"You said you'd--" he began, and then stopped and she heard an almost silent swallow.

"I will," she said, gathering up her purse, tightening her coat around her. "He'll understand, you'll see."

Willie got out and circled the truck in the darkness, and she made herself wait for him to open the door. She was, of course, perfectly capable of opening her own door, but in the mood Willie seemed to be in, watching his own manners with a strictness far beyond reason, she had a feeling he would have insisted on it had she tried it. And being as tense as he was, she didn't have the heart to upset him further.

"Thank you, Willie," she said, slipping out of the truck to walk up the side steps and circle the broad, long porch to the front door. She had a feeling that this was front door business, never mind the fact that Barnabas had been quite distraught the one time he'd found she'd come in through the kitchen door.

Willie was right behind her, his steps hurried and short. His hand was on the handle of the door the second before hers, and she pulled her hand back. He pushed open the door and stood away, allowing her to pass ahead of him, into the dim, candlelit foyer, the tall shape of Barnabas' coat on the coat rack giving evidence to the fact that he was home. The air of the Old House smelt of wax and damp and a slow stillness that never seemed to quicken with life, no matter how many people were under its roof. More candles stood on the half-moon table in the hall, flecked with shadows of the fire from the front room. Where Barnabas stood, as she circled around the pillar to stand right at the edge of the carpet. He'd not seen her yet, just as he turned, his eyes only saw Willie, and she glanced back, but could only see the shimmer of candlelight on the side of Willie's face.

Then Barnabas' expression lightened. "Miss Winters, what a lovely surprise." He walked toward her, his hands reaching out to take hers, to draw her close to the fire. "Your car is in order, I trust? Here, let me take your coat, you look chilled."

She let him take her coat off, and handed her purse to him as well. These he handed to Willie, who disappeared into the darkness of the foyer to hang them up, while Barnabas took her arm and led her to the red wingbacked chair that was closest to the fire. 

"Brandy or sherry?" he asked, his face calm and smooth with the assumption that, surely, she'd be taking some refreshment.

"Sherry, I think," she said, feeling the pulse of the flames soak into her. She'd not realized how cold the early evening had gotten, not until this moment, in this chair, while a gentleman in a dark suit and tie handed her a small glass of sherry with as much ceremony as he would have served a queen. She felt the smile form as she took a sip. Sure that it was excellent sherry, though she'd never tasted it before she'd come to Collinwood and had nothing to compare it with.

Barnabas sat across from her, with a glass of his own that he set on the little table beside him. The light of the flames along one side of his face made him seem mellow and welcoming. She had to work hard, for a moment, to remember her promise to Willie.

"So, do tell me about your car, Miss Winters. I know so little about them, but I trust Willie's instincts on the matter entirely."

She had to dip her head. He would doubt Willie's instincts the moment she spoke; she had to be careful and preserve the job that Willie cared so much about. 

"I trust him as well, Mr. Collins, as you know, he saved me quite a cold walk just last week."

"Yes, I do recall…" His voice faded as his eyes darkened. So concerned he was that something might have happened to her, she could see it in his face.

"But the garage," she began, bravely soldiering on, "I'm afraid they aren't very organized, for you see--"

"Not organized?" His voice rose. "Whatever do you mean? Is your car not ready?"

Pausing, she looked at him fully, "Well, no, but Willie--"

"Willie!" 

There was a sound in the hall and Willie was instantly there, white. Stiff, his jaw locked and his eyes on the floor. Hair falling over his forehead. And the pulse of his heartbeat, even in the shadows of the candlelight, she could see the quiver of his throat as he breathed, jaggedly, in and out.

"You will explain this instant why Miss Winter's car is not ready," said Barnabas

She watched Willie wipe an open palm along one thigh, slowly, could almost see his mind work to come up with an explanation. He opened his mouth. Took in a breath.

But Barnabas spoke first. "I instructed you to arrange it so that Miss Winters would not be inconvenienced by the necessary work, and yet here I find her without the use of her car. Would you care to explain that to me?"

Barnabas' tone was stern and hard, and she supposed that this was what Willie had been afraid of. The disapproval of his boss, loss of his job, the--

"I took her to the garage, like you said, an' told 'em what do to the car. They said they'd have it done, an' then--"

"And then the car is not finished, is that correct?" Barnabas stood up now, taking a pace forward, seeming to forget that she was sitting there, chilled as his form came between her and the heat of the fire. She looked up. He was angry, that much was certain. And Willie, about to speak, wanting to say something. She made herself stand up too.

"Willie," said Barnabas, the warning in his tone.

"Mr. Collins," she said.

"I--"began Willie.

" _Barnabas_ ," she said, quite loud now. 

Barnabas stopped. Turned his head to look at her, brows drawing together as if he were quite surprised that she were even in the room, let alone in the possession of the temerity to speak. It was not how she usually felt around him, and she had to pause for a second before she could think of what to say.

"It is not Willie's fault," she said, using the voice she used when trying to explain something to a drunk Roger Collins, when he would insist on giving his governess advice at ten minutes after midnight. "Willie gave the garage strict instructions about what was to be done, and what time it was to be done by. When we went by at five, they confessed that they had underestimated the parts they would need."  


"Parts?" 

"An alternator and a fan belt, I believe. They did not have them in stock. Now. If the garage was unaware that they didn't have those parts, how on earth do you expect Willie to know it?"

"I expect that he would take a shopkeeper in hand and make the man keep his promises." He faced her now, glowering, and he seemed too disgruntled over her loss of a car for one more day for her to believe that he was angry with her. Having made a promise to a lady, he was honor bound to keep it. That was the problem. 

She reached out her hand and placed it on Barnabas' arm. Felt him relax beneath her touch. "Mr. Collins, I appreciate your concern on my behalf, but really, you can't be angry with Willie. He took good care of me in that garage, but if the parts aren't there, the parts aren't there. The garage is newly opened, after all, and they can hardly be expected to have everything in order." She tilted her head at him and smiled. "Can they?"  


"A garage barely opened, Willie? What do you have to say about that?" Barnabas snapped out the question to his servant without taking his eyes off her.

There was a pause. "Best in town," Willie said, finally. "That garage used ta be in Bangor, they moved here. The best, you said. They're the best." 

She glanced at Willie. He was perfectly still, all in the light now, the flicker of flame glinting in his eyes. He was still scared, she could tell, but there was hope there now. Hope that she could help him. Well, he helped her, she would return the favor. 

"Really, Mr. Collins, it's beyond Willie's control. And that garage, you could tell they were fixing it up nice, and all the men were working hard, I know they will take good care of my car."

Finally she saw Barnabas' shoulders loosen. "But how can I make it up to you? I promised you your car would be ready and it is not."

"You can promise me that Willie won't be held responsible for it," she said, looking right at him.

A frown. Small. Pressed away by the charm of his smile. "Of course, my dear. Anything, anything at all. But what will you do without your car tomorrow?" He drew her to sit down again, sitting across from her, leaving Willie, still and silent, standing just outside the entryway to the front room. 

"Tomorrow." She had forgotten. A doctor's appointment, made three months in advance, in Bangor. She'd have to take the train.

"You have somewhere to go," he said, sounding certain he was right. 

"Yes," she admitted, letting herself sink back in the chair, though she was conscious of Willie standing there, watching, as if he knew the conversation wasn't entirely finished. "I have a doctor's appointment at 10 o'clock. Made a while ago, it's a busy office."

"A doctor? Are you ill?"

She looked at him and smiled. Ever concerned for her, he was leaning forward now, one hand about to extend. To hold her hand, she knew. To comfort her if she was frightened.

"No," she said, not allowing herself to laugh. Not even a little bit. "It's just a checkup. My annual checkup. And tomorrow's the perfect day for it, Mr. Collins took Carolyn and David with him to Boston. I have the whole day off."

"Why don't you take Cousin Roger's car, then?" he suggested. "I'm sure he won't begrudge you the use of it, and I know Cousin Elizabeth never drives it."

"I can't drive a stick shift and that's what the Jaguar has," she said. "I only know how to drive an automatic.

For a second she watched him mull it over, and knew, a second before he said it, what the offer would be. "Then Willie shall drive you. Not in the truck, Bangor is too far for you to have to go in that conveyance without necessity. He shall drive you in the Jaguar. And bring you home in time to pick up your own vehicle."

Another day spent with Willie Loomis. Last year she would have found the idea disgusting, even scary. Yet, now, she knew how it might be, with Willie always on the lookout for her safety and her comfort, always attentive, yet never ever bold. Easy to talk to, shy, mostly, until you got some coffee into him. Even then, still gentle, soft-spoken. At least away from the Old House. She probably wouldn't be able to get two words out of him right about now.

"You will let me make it up to you, Miss Winters, in this way, otherwise I will feel I have used you ill. Willie shall drive you to your appointment, and I shall be satisfied that I have not inconvenienced you by my lack of knowledge about the local garages."

She looked up. Past the fire and past Mr. Collins, who was lingering on her every word. Into the shadows and stillness of the hallway, where stood a young man who would rather cut off his own hand then feel that _he_ had used her ill. Who was, as she knew, as polite and courteous, in his way, as Barnabas was. 

"Will that be alright with you, Willie?" she asked. "I'd hate to trouble you again."

A small pause with no one saying anything, Willie not moving a muscle, and she decided that now was the time to drive Barnabas' promise home. "This will, of course, completely make up for the fact that my car is not ready today." To Barnabas she spoke now, seeing as it was he who felt responsible, in the end. "As you will be freeing Willie up to take me to and from Bangor, you are inconveniencing yourself, you realize. And, as usual, doing far, far too much to make up for the fact that the _garage_ ," she emphasized the word, "did not have my car done." 

The sweet, sweet man. Positively glowing that he could help her out in this way, to move events in her world that, however astray they might have gone, he had the power to fix. She smiled at him, and raised her glass of sherry. "Thank you, Mr. Collins, for always taking such good care of me. I don't think I've ever ridden in a Jaguar before."

"But of course," he shrugged, as if dismissing his own generosity. "If this is something I can arrange for you, then it is time you had a chance to experience it." He tipped his glass to her in return. Then, sharply, to the side, he said, "Willie, you may go. I will not need you any more this evening."

Willie slipped away, into the darkness of the hall and she thought she heard his steps heading for the kitchen, where surely he would be preparing his dinner, much delayed by her.

"I can't stay long, you realize," she told him, sipping the sherry, feeling the small flames, comforting and slow, make their way down along her insides. "I didn't get as much paperwork done as I should have, given David's absence."

He smiled. "Then after we drink our sherry, I shall walk you home. But tell me, what wickedness were you up to on such a glorious autumn day, Miss Winters?"

She could tell he was only teasing, tilting his head back, watching her remember. Soaking it up, as if he'd been long away from her, instead of having seen her just last night.

"I went for a walk," she told him. "And the sky was a glorious blue."

"Was it, my dear." He was not asking, only confirming, as if her discovery was already known to him. Which it would have to be. But it was as if he were enjoying something of a secret between them. As if the sky being blue were known only to them.

"I had wanted Willie to take me for a walk when he drove me home, but he said he couldn't stop."

"Couldn't stop?"

"Yes, there were these woods on the way home. Most of the trees had escaped the blizzard, and all those leaves, well, you know how it is."

"Nothing like a New England autumn, is that it?" His voice pronounced this as if he'd discovered it for her. Pride, or something like it, shining in his eyes. "And Willie refused you this?"

"Well, he had to, I'm sure." She ducked her head, thinking for a moment about how shaken up he'd been at the suggestion, let alone having to say no. She decided to leave that part out, and tried to smooth things over. "I wanted to walk through that little valley you cross through after the bridge as you come up the hill out of town, you know the one?"

He nodded. Of course he knew. Must have passed over that bridge a hundred times or more.

"It is usually so windy by the river there, I'm sure Willie felt it would be too chilly for me. I hadn't exactly worn my thickest coat."

Something settled Barnabas' shoulders, and he leaned back in his chair. "It was right, then, for Willie to refuse you. We cannot have the Collins family's favorite governess catching a cold."

As if to prove a point, a gust of wind whisked down the chimney, sending a small puff of smoke over the edges of the hearth. 

"Listen to that," she said, holding her hands in a circle around her sherry glass. "Winter comes so early to Maine."

"Indeed," he replied. Then, "I should see you safely home before the night settles in too hard."

She tipped back the last of her sherry, feeling it reach with warm, velvet fingers into her stomach. When Roger Collins drank, he totted back a shot and then poured himself another before even seeming to taste the first one.. When Barnabas Collins drank, it was as if he were only enjoying the thought of the sherry. The amount in his glass looked hardly touched at all as she rose and placed her glass next to it.

"You spoil me," she said, almost under her breath. Embarrassed as soon as she said it, not having meant to say it aloud. "I beg your pardon--"

"No need, my dear. You deserve spoiling."

He rose beside her, taking her two hands in his. Standing close, his hands cool, his face coming towards hers as if he meant to kiss her. Which of course, he would not do, not Barnabas, he would never presume--Instead he brought both of her hands to his lips and kissed them. One soft, velvet kiss on the back of each hand, his breath lingering on her skin like a winter breeze, her shoulders catching on the shiver that raced up her back. Then he lifted his eyes to hers.

"Let me walk you home."

Home was through the cold and the night and the woods and there was nothing she wanted more to do at that moment than to stay at his side, by the fire, under the slate roof of the Old House. But he was walking her to the foyer, lifting her coat down from the coat rack, sliding it on her arms, all the while his eyes on her, his dark flickering eyes, the shine of his hair in the candlelight, and just for a moment, her soul stood still.

_I will stay, I will stay, I will stay._

But then his bootheel clicked on the stone floor, and he turned away to gather his own coat, and she found herself shaking. Dipped her head, and closed her eyes, just for a moment to take a breath. 

"Shall we go, my dear?" asked Barnabas, pulling open the front door.

"Yes, yes, of course," she replied, stepping out ahead of him across the threshold. The cold air woke her up at once, dousing all that remained of the sherry in her head. Barnabas took her hand to help her down the stairs, and then, instead of letting go, boldly linked her arm through his, and stepped onto the flagstone path that led from the driveway into the woods. It only went about fifty feet or so, as if someone had once started the project and then abandoned it for something better. She knew the second it ended as her feet hit the frozen ground. 

"Cold and colder still," said Barnabas in the icy dark. As if he were reciting something from story or a poem he had read.

"Right to the bone," she said, to agree. Not that anything was making much sense at that moment. "And Mr. Collins," she began. Waited for their pace to settle into a rhythm and tried again.

"Mr. Collins, I do want to thank you again for letting Willie help me. I know that he has a lot of work to do for you, and yet you--"

"Think nothing of it, my dear Miss Winters. Willie is as happy to assist you as I am to allow it."

"But--"

"I will not hear of you having any concern over this matter." His voice was stern, but as she glanced over at him, she saw only his affection. And the glitter in his dark eyes. But reflected from where? There was no moon.

"There is one thing, Miss Winters, that you could do for me."

"If I can," she said, "how can I help?"

"It is about Willie," he began, and then stopped. Seemed to consider his words as they walked the path in the woods in the darkness, and then he began again. "While you are on your sojourn with him tomorrow, I think you should be aware that Willie considers himself one of your suitors."

"Willie? But he--" It was impossible. Since their trip to Bangor and their blizzard-enforced stay at a motel there, he'd barely spoken two words to her without necessity. When he'd seen her in town, or at the Great House, his only communication had been a nod or even just a glance. Never more than that. And when she'd gone to the Old House to say hello, he'd turned her away very coldly. How could that possibly be equated with courtship?

"I know it's hard to believe, but Willie can have a very pliable heart where women are concerned. And since your extended visit with him during that blizzard, well, I'm under the impression that he not only considers himself your suitor but also your protector."

"I hardly think--"

The trees thickened around them, some bare branched, others thick with evergreen, dusted with frost and smelling damp and cold. She felt Barnabas' hand tighten on her arm. "Surely you do not doubt me, Miss Winters, for who knows Willie Loomis better than I?"

She could hardly think he meant it, yet, it appeared that he believed what he was saying. Expected her to believe it too. Without question or discussion. 

"What do you want me to do about it?" she asked.

They were nearing the Great House, which rose above them as they climbed the path that cut through the hedge and the lawn. Mrs. Stoddard forever despaired of feet cutting through the sod, and had dismissed Roger's suggestion to lay it down with flagstone and make it a proper path of it. No, Mrs. Stoddard had claimed, that would ruin the curve of grass across the slope of the hill. Was ruined anyway, Roger usually retaliated. An old, old argument that stumbled around behind Barnabas Collins' strange request.

He almost laughed at her. She could hear it in his voice. "Oh, nothing devious, I assure you. I just wanted you to be aware, and wary, and, if he should make his advances, you should, of course, turn him away, and let me know about it. Behavior like that is not to be encouraged."

Turning away any advance of Willie's was something she would have done in any case, but the request from such a gentleman, to assume she would have done anything else, was irksome.

The bright, burning lights over the front door lit the small port-cochiere as they stood there. "Will you come in?" she asked, out of politeness, even as a small part of her steamed.

"No, my dear," he said, letting her hands go, finally, with a pat. "I must get back. Paperwork awaits me, as well."

She nodded and smiled and slipped her hands into her pockets, in case he wanted to kiss them again. It was one thing to be courted by such a kind and intelligent man. It was another thing to be told that she could not accept another man's advances. Why, knowing how she felt about Willie, as he surely did, would he even be worried that she would reciprocate? And why would he even imagine that Willie was interested in her in that way?

Victoria gave him a wave as she walked into the foyer of the Great House and closed the door behind her. The house was silent, as it usually was, with lights blazing that did nothing to tame the dark, and a fire lit in the Front Room that no one was enjoying. She had never yet seen a bill or heard anyone discussing the expense, though perhaps she never would. The Collins family, moneyed or no, was not one to talk about what they considered their private business. And to them, it seemed, money was very private.

She made herself a sandwich in the kitchen, using chicken salad leftover from the day before, and then cleaned up after herself. The quietness of the house as she walked up the stairs to her room was almost deafening. A house like Collinwood, she always had thought, should be filled with people. Family, come to visit, some to stay, and conversation over cups of tea, or coffee, as the Collins' preferred. It should not be as still as a windless night or as silent as the same. It always seemed to her that the soul of the house had run off years before, slunk off in the night for want of care. A good dinner party would have set everything to rights, or at least set the house on the right road, but it was not to be. Elizabeth and Roger both did not like guests, David tormented every delivery boy to knock at the door, and Carolyn was simply unwilling to wait within the stone walls long enough to let her brightness sink in. 

And that was the way it was. Nothing to be done, not by her. Not in this lifetime. 

Barnabas Collins was no different, in a way. For all his early talk about starting his own shipyard, she'd yet to see any place in town with his name on it. He had plenty of money, from the amounts he was sinking into the Old House, that much was obvious. There was mention of business opportunities he was taking advantage of, high stakes on the stock markets, exchange of antiques, importing foreign goods. No one seemed to know for sure, besides which, it was entirely improper for a young lady, especially one employed by his family, to inquire after a man's business prospects. Even though she had wanted for ages to ask him how he kept it all straight. He had no bookkeeper, Roger had told her once, no secretary, no accountant. Just Willie, working his fingers to the proverbial bone and as loyal to Barnabas as a hound dog. 

She got to her room and locked the door behind her, as she had been doing since Maggie Evans had disappeared. Then she checked the locks on the window. Not that it would make much difference, from what she had gleaned in town, the monster who had stolen Maggie had been able to bend the bars on the hospital windows. Her paltry locks and bolts would be like tissue to the monster. Still, it felt better to try than to not. 

She dressed in her favorite flannel nightgown, washed her face and brushed her teeth. Then sat down on the edge of her bed and brushed her hair. At the Foundling Home sitting on beds was forbidden. You slept on them or made them up or stripped them. You could never sit on them, such wear and tear was discouraged, the cost of a new mattress thrown at them as the reason why. To do this now, with all the lights in her room blazing, seemed sinful and luxurious. She could have sat in the wingbacked chair in front of the fireplace, but without a fire there, it seemed lonely, like a walk in bad weather. 

This thought turned her mind to Willie Loomis. He'd refused her request for a walk, and after refusing her assistance with Barnabas Collins so many times in the past, had finally accepted her help in explaining the situation. 

_He's like me. He'd prefer to do things on his own._

Independent for all his loyalty to Barnabas. She could respect that, even if she would never consider him as a suitor. What puzzled her was why Barnabas would. It was really laughable, and had Barnabas been around during Willie's early days at Collinwood, he would find out how much so. A terror, Willie had been. A holy terror, like a schoolyard bully gone unchecked for ever and ever. You had to walk through the schoolyard, you couldn't avoid him. And when he caught you? It was always worse than you thought it could be. She would never forget him breathing on her, stroking her hair. Looking at her with that crazy intensity. Shimmering with wanting her, letting his desire be known. 

She'd never pitied him in those days, not even after he'd become sick. He'd gone on and on about being remorseful and had even seemed to feel bad about having been, as he put it, such a louse. She had almost believed that he'd deserved whatever illness he'd contracted. If anyone did, he did. 

In the end, it had been Barnabas Collins who had changed him. The story was still being told in the village, in the grocery store, at the post office. If ever Willie Loomis happened to drive or walk by, the talk would start up, and refrains of _remember when_ , and _can you believe it_ would echo around her. She had thought the story would grow old, but it seemed to increase in energy as the months went by. She made a point now, of not lingering in the village when that sort of talk began.

Because, even if the story was true, which it was, the fact that he had really and truly turned over a new leaf never seemed to matter. It was of no consequence that Willie Loomis was not only trusted with the Collins family millions, all of Barnabas Collins' entire estate, he was also trusted to pick up the eldest heir from the airport. Not to mention rescue the family governess. Maybe they didn't know. Maybe they wouldn't care, even if they did know. Either way, she wasn't going to be the one to tell them. The Collins family liked to keep its secrets, and how Willie Loomis got his wings clipped by the cousin from England was one of them. 

Putting her hairbrush away, she pulled back the covers and got into the bed, sighing with relief as she let the blankets settle over her. Giggling with a sleepy sigh over the thought of Willie Loomis being her protector and suitor. 

_Imagine that._

But of course, it was true. In a way. Since the days of Barnabas' coming, he'd been nothing but careful with her. All his actions, his words, she was treated like Dresden china in his hands. Not that he ever touched her, never even so much as the edge of his shirt came near her. He was all careful distance and manners. Exactly what she would have wished for in the early days. This, which had given way to an expectation of a more friendly relationship with him, like she would have with a school chum. Or a working peer. For they both worked, steady jobs without much income. He was really the only person she associated with who worked. Everyone else seemed to be soaking up the Collins fortune with nary a thought. And Willie, now working for the richest of them all, was almost as aloof as his boss.

Until the day he'd rescued her. And a rescue it had been. She a damsel in distress, and Willie in his white truck, like a knight of old. Through a snowstorm he'd come and saved her from a missing oil pan bolt, and hang what his original errand had been. Something for Barnabas, she recalled, that dresser he'd had to pick up. His concern for it had gone into the blinding snow. He'd waited with her, waited _for_ her, said kind and comforting things about Burke, and he'd taken care of the car, the situation, and her, all the way up to the door of her room at the Bangor Motel.

It had seemed odd, even then. Her stuck in a motel with Willie Loomis. In a blizzard, the snow coming down so thick they'd be snowbound by morning, and she actually began to enjoy herself. Even considering the fact that Willie tried to lope off alone to his room first thing. The idea of them in a motel together must have struck him as strange, as well, and his days in solitary work at the Old House had made him shy of company. Not her company, surely? But she'd had to talk him into eating with her, that first night, and he'd not quite believed her, she felt, when she'd insisted on his company. 

He'd been flustered. That shaggy forelock like lace over his sea blue eyes. And a _look_. She couldn't remember where she'd seen that expression on his face before. Not something she saw often enough to place correctly in her memory. Tucking it away, she accepted his lift to the supermarket to pick up what she might need for the night. The suggestion had been his, another star in his book of kindness; he'd even let her have five minutes alone, privacy awarded her, she thought, without even a second's hesitation. No leering over her shoulder to see what she'd bought as he might have done in the old days, were she to have been as foolish to have ended up stranded in a blizzard with him. She picked up a toothbrush, some toothpaste, a jar of face cream she could always use at home, and thanked her lucky stars that it wasn't her time of the month. The store did not carry her brand, and the boxes were very big. How could she have been discrete about it in the small confines of the truck? Impossible.

The dinner at Brewers had been a delight, except for the fact that Willie seemed to be very worried about their situation, and distracted. About what his boss, Mr. Collins, would say upon their return. At least that was what she had sensed. Willie had said nothing directly, but his comments, oblique as they were, had been sad and dark. But ever courteous when he'd felt he'd offended her, she could not remember what he'd said, but his apology had been quick and earnest. Something about her not understanding how hard it was to change. Yes, that was it. She'd said, about his being able to change, _that's a hard lesson for most people_. And he'd snapped back, _How would you know?_ Sharp, as though if he'd had a knife in his hand he would have cut her with it. 

For a brief flicker, she had a glimpse of the old Willie. Sly, street Willie, that dodgy evasive look, the sullen pull to his lower lip. The gleam in his eyes that told her he was up for a brawl if anyone would give him the opportunity. Then he pulled back from it, shrugging under his skin, eyes trying not to look at her and failing. She'd seen that happen before, too. Barnabas Collins did it, on many an evening. Casting his gaze on her and trying to not stare and failing. It was always charming when he did it, and now Willie was doing it. He seemed more nervous about it than Mr. Collins, definitely, as if less practiced, less confident.

After they'd eaten, he'd chauffeured her back to the motel, all his efforts geared toward making sure she was as little inconvenienced as he possibly could. He even plowed out into the snow to bring the truck to the very door of the restaurant, regardless of the fact that he didn't have proper footgear any more than she did. The little cap he'd brought at the store couldn't possibly have gone very far in keeping out the cold, and yet he only was worried about her.

She'd explained this to one and all at the Great House when she called, where no doubt every fireplace had a fire in it and all the electric lights were blazing. Mrs. Stoddard had answered the phone, her calm even tones belying the fact that she was terribly worried. _We're fine_ , she'd said. _I know_ , Mrs. Stoddard had replied. _That still isn't calming my nerves about the fact that you could have been caught in that blizzard without any way out, if it had not been for Willie Loomis._

Mrs. Stoddard had been about to go on, when the phone, apparently, exchanged hands. It was Barnabas. Collins. Perfectly smooth, voice soothing her across the wires. What remained of her own jangled nerves faded away as soon as she heard him speak. _You are safe?_ came the question, _you are being well looked after?_ _Yes, of course,_ she'd said, telling him of Willie's kindness, mentioning the fact that the two of them might have to remain another whole day. It was then he'd asked to speak to Willie.

And Willie, coming into her room, actually shivered as he took the phone. She'd put it off to the cold, but only for a moment. His eyes were focused on something she couldn't see, and she realized that he was not only worried, he was _very_ worried. Surely Barnabas wouldn't think there was anything else Willie could have done but bring her to the motel? In retrospect, it was yet another instance of Willie's concern for his job, even to fretting about events beyond his control. Always trying so hard. Why was she the only one who saw it?

After a terse conversation, Willie gave her the phone back and left the room. She'd turned up the heater, and the room was finally turning warm. She unbuttoned her coat with one hand, and held the phone with the other. Barnabas talking, assuring her that Willie would take the very best care of her, that she and he should stay at the motel as long as was necessary, until the roads were adequate for travel and, as he said, his voice lowering, _Your safe journey home to us is assured_. This particular comment made her feel even warmer. And well loved. It was always easier at a distance to be accepting of being cherished, as Barnabas cherished her. Easier because she didn't have to look in his dark eyes as he said something sweepingly kind. 

She hung up the phone and cooled her face with the palms of her hands. Feeling a glow and wanting to share it. And walked to the open door to Willie's room. The lady at the front desk no doubt, no _doubt_ , assumed the worst of both of them. But whatever was presumed about them, she and Willie knew the truth. If she were to stand for a moment or two in his room, who was to know? And why should they care?

But she found, after she knocked and he opened the door, that she really couldn't bring herself to cross the threshold. It was too bold, even for a night such as this, with a hidden darkness that would keep its secrets even after the snow was long melted. Beyond that, it had been the look on Willie's face that had stopped her. Not expectant hope, as she might have seen in any other man. More, the white skin of anxiety. He was so worried, even still, that she'd not the heart to step into his room, on the little patch of damp, brown carpet where he'd taken off his shoes and left them. She'd teased him then, watching him take a deep breath, perhaps his first of the night (hopefully not his last), and almost laugh.

Still, he'd been nervous, and she'd reached out and pressed her hand to his arm. He'd jumped. Actually jumped, color coming to his paleness. She'd said something soothing, and he'd ducked his head and looked up at her though his lashes. There was that _look_ again, triggering a memory from somewhere else. Somewhere, somewhen, much warmer. 

Pushing the thought away, they'd said their goodnights, and she returned to her own room. Locked the door behind her, and slowly got ready for bed. Slipped off her dress and stockings and laid them across the chair. Took off her underwear and rinsed them, and tugged on the straps of her slip. Any stress on them, beyond the usual, would break them, and then where would she be? She took that off, and her brassiere, and slipped between the white cotton sheets, the heat pouring out of the heater, and her bare skin sighing, the muscles underneath starting to relax. 

And dreamed of lilacs.

*

The following day had been uneventful, even boring. She remembered eating rolls and coffee, and playing cards with another couple whose names she could not recall. Eating. Playing cards again. Willie had been at her beck and call the entire day. Unobtrusive, at her elbow, ready to fetch whatever she wanted. It had been marvelous to laugh with him during the card game, to watch him throw his head back and laugh until tears smeared his eyelashes and cheeks. Too unusual for her to ever expect it again, it seemed to her that the laughter came from somewhere that Willie didn't usually have access to. That was a sad thought, sobering her, for a moment, and she'd had to excuse herself to take a nap. 

What had amazed her even more was Willie's trek out into the snow on the day they'd left the motel. With only his thin jacket and a boughten cap, street shoes and no gloves, he'd not only shoveled out his truck, he'd shoveled out the car of the man who'd loaned him the shovel. He'd stayed out at least an hour in subzero temperatures, up to his knees in snow, and had returned only when he was blue. When he came in, his pants were layered in a thin sheet of ice. He'd been too cold even to shiver, and she'd become even more alarmed at the white patches on the edges of his jaw, the stiff way his mouth had moved when he'd said _Thanks_ , and the way he'd not been able to focus on her when she tried to give him a cup of coffee. His fingers, as she touched the edges of them, were marble cold. 

He'd gone to his room, to warm up, she hoped, though, again, his only worry seemed to be about his errand for Barnabas. She had gone to her room as well, standing by the window, feeling the warmth of the room bank off the icy glass, her hands idly rubbing each other as she watched the clouds break up from eggshell grey to blue and white. She'd made a call to Carolyn's hotel near the airport, the airy giggle telling her that Carolyn had had a grand time being catered to during the storm, and she set the rest of the schedule for the day in her mind.

Later, Willie had gotten the truck started and warmed up, not even letting her walk across the now-flat mass of snow to it. He'd insisted on bringing the truck around to the main door. Then, after Willie had picked up Barnabas' dresser, he'd taken her to eat bad-for-you, greasy hamburgers, a pure delight after mass-made, back kitchen meatloaf and coffee from a public urn. During the meal, however, had come the uncomfortable conversation about who would pay for the food. Willie had won, in the end; she'd had to give in or she feared his panic would have attracted attention. It had taken her best efforts to break the silence that had followed, and she'd been glad to share her secret obsession for greasy-spoon burgers. Not that there was much that she wouldn't have shared with him, had he asked. But he hadn't, and they'd picked up Carolyn at the airport, and the closeness between them was cut off the second the other woman came into view. Willie had been even more aloof as he drove them all home than he'd been when he'd first picked her up off the snowy side of the road only days ago. 

So she'd kissed him. Just on the cheek, as a way to say thank you, and hang the fact that Carolyn, standing in the foyer, was open-mouthed, her eyes dancing. And it wasn't the _look_ she'd seen in Willie's eyes, it was something else. That expression he had when his worry was skin-surface close. And away he'd gone.

Carolyn, naturally, was full of questions about what had happened, even when Vicki insisted that there was nothing to say about it. _You have a tale to tell_ , Carolyn had said, her voice singing with amusement. _I do not_ , Vicki'd replied. 

___You and Willie at a hotel for two nights?_

_It was a motel, and we had separate rooms._

_Did he try and kiss you?_

_He was nothing but kind to me, the perfect gentleman._

None of it had done any good. Carolyn had followed her to her room, slinging herself on the arm of the green wingbackeded chair by the fireplace, chatting about Buzz, even when Vicki shut herself in the bathroom to wash up and change into something clean and dry. It didn't matter, apparently, that Carolyn was no longer seeing Buzz, her stories about him, told before and now told again loudly through the thick, wooden door, were quite vivid, and lavished with great detail. She went on and on about his eyelashes, and how his hips were perfect, and how tight his pants were. How tight his pants _became_ when Miss Carolyn would walk in the room. Vicki had heard that one before, and secretly thought that Carolyn missed the way Buzz had treated her. 

She herself had only seen them together once or twice, and it had always worried her that Buzz would be too rough to treat a girl nicely until she'd seen Buzz handle a tantrum of Carolyn's at the Blue Whale. She'd never found out what had originally set Carolyn off, but the more hysterical the girl had grown, the more calm Buzz had become, till at last, he'd taken both of her hands in his and made her sit in his lap. Where she'd instantly burst into tears and thrown her arms around his neck. Other patrons in the Blue Whale moved away, towards the bar, the door, the cigarette machine. Anywhere but in the vicinity of a Collins having a breakdown. Buzz had let her cry, and when she was finished, he'd whispered in her ear and sent her off to the ladies to wash her face. 

Vicki had been hovering near, shoulders tensing with worry, not really realizing that she'd walked so close to the couple. As Carolyn had walked off, Buzz had stood and turned to her. He'd looked at her with those dark eyes, framed by the oft-mentioned eyelashes. Yes, she'd decided, he was beautiful. Carolyn had never mentioned how good he'd smelled, though. Or how warm she would become as he stepped toward her. Or how still she would become as one of his hands came up, the backs of his fingers stroking her cheek. _Don't worry, angel,_ he'd said, _she'll work it out, she's just got a lot to carry right now. Dig?_

Having only read romance books and the one sex education booklet someone had smuggled into the Home, her knowledge of sex was cryptic, and of passion all she knew had been only in print. None of it, not even the whispered, giggly conversations with Carolyn had prepared her for the way the hair on her arms and the back of her neck had stood on end when Buzz had touched her. His concern was for Carolyn and for friend Vicki, and it ended with that moment, without him ever knowing the effect he'd had on her. She wasn't in love with him, too well grounded in the reality of the kind of man he was, she could never confuse what she felt with that. But there was no way, really, to explain the hot dip her stomach made, or the faint heat along the inside of her thighs. And the _rippling_. It was the only word she could think of to describe it.

It was that type of information Carolyn was poking around for, even as Vicki came out of the bathroom, firmly ensconced in nightgown and robe. Carolyn assumed that if Vicki felt anything, she would act on it. And a kiss, in Miss Carolyn's book, was enough evidence that both of these, the feeling and the act, had happened. Or would happen. In the very near future. 

___Were his pants tight? Did you even look?_ Carolyn had asked, giggling, collapsing into the chair so bonelessly that Vicki began to imagine that the drinking had started quite early, and had not yet worn off. That or Carolyn was exhausted from having fun, far too much so to realize that she was pushing for information that was clearly off bounds, that had been clearly stated as being such. It wasn't like her to be so rude, not in private quarters. And especially not to the family governess, who she had professed, one brandy-infused evening, to adore.

Taking the other girl firmly in hand, Vicki had led her to the door. _Go get your bags from the foyer_ , she had said, _and take a hot bath. I need to get some rest._

At the doorway to Vicki's room, Carolyn had pouted, stringing her hair through her fingers. _Didja even_ think _about visiting his room?_

Vicki silenced her with a look. Of course she _had_ , but that wasn't any of Carolyn's business.

Carolyn had finally gone away, and Vicki had slid into her warm comfortable bed, pulling the fine cotton sheets and thick blankets all the way up to her ears. It was good to be home, such as it was, and even the silence of the vast house did not keep her awake for long.

*

Vicki came out of the doctor's office, into the bright-leaved, autumn sunshine with a clean bill of health, looking forward to the ride back to Collinwood with Willie at the wheel. She spotted the Jaguar right away, parked not two steps from the front door of the hospital annex. Willie was waiting inside of it, probably listening of the burble of the well-tuned engine, and of course he had found someplace close to wait with the car, lest she, in his mind, have to exert herself in any way to find him. She opened the door and slid into the leather passenger seat, the new car smell telling her, as it had from the first, that the car was not often driven.

Her pleasure evaporated when she realized that Willie was not resting as she thought, his jacket off in the warmth of the sun coming through the glazed windows, but that he was slumped over the steering wheel. Back bleeding, streaks of dark red soaking through, and even the seat had criss-cross patterns, as if he'd leaned too hard against it. He'd been okay that morning, although distant, driving her to Bangor in silence as she'd looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. Wondering all the while, as she absorbed the smooth ride of the Jaguar, if Barnabas had been right and Willie did, indeed, feel he was one of her suitors.

"Willie," she said, gripping his arm, giving him a shake. "Willie, are you okay?"

"Ung," came the response, as he seemed to pull his arms back in slow motion. 

"Willie, you're bleeding, don't you know that?"

She leaned close, knowing he was breathing, but wondering, with his white, white face, if he wasn't close to passing out. They were very near to the hospital, and if she could run inside fast enough, they might bring a stretcher out. She was about to get out of the car, when Willie pushed himself back, and shoved open his door, lunging out, into the bright air, the trapped heat whooshing by her, as he stumbled across the gravel lot. 

In a second she was behind him, leaving her door open, and her purse and coat in plain view. But she did not care, it didn't matter, as she moved to his side, and hang who was watching as she reached out to him.

"Willie, what happened?"

He had stopped, she could see his legs quivering, and he raised his head to look at her. Hair falling into his eyes, sticking to his forehead with sweat. And that stubborn line to his chin.

"'mokay. You hear me? 'mokay."

"No, you're not okay. How did you hurt yourself, let me take you to the clinic, it's right over there." Taking his hand in hers she gave it a tug, gentle, but firm, as she would when David had gotten into one of his scrapes, outside messing around against all instructions, and not wanting to go in, wounds and bruises regardless.

Willie snatched his hands out of hers, fierce, holding his arm to his chest. 

"What happened?" She stood between him and the car, not that she thought that he would try and drive off without her, but it would be easier to get him to the clinic if he was not already sitting down. The sun was getting hot on the back of her neck, the odd warm time near midday that made autumn a secret joy, something New Englanders never told outsiders. Barnabas had known it, however, telling her of the special blue of the sky, and the whispery, cool air that called for fires and mulled wine. Walks with clasped and mittened hands as the evening set in. But Willie was having none of it. In fact he looked ready to be sick all over the gravel.

"Willie, please."

He swallowed. "I fell."

"You fell? But how--"

"There was wires, and I fell into them." He nodded, looking straight at her. "Got all tangled up." His lips tightened against his lip as if he was fighting nausea. "Shouldn'ta left them wires there, but--"

Horrified, she interrupted him. "Why would Mr. Collins let you go _out_ in this condition?"

Another swallow and he finally looked away. Sweat slid down the side of his face, and she didn't think it was from the warm air. "He don't know."

"He doesn't know? I imagine he'll be quite concerned to find out--" She stopped as he stepped back from her. Away. Behind him was a small park with a picnic area flanked by red-burnished trees, and beyond that, the streets of Bangor. But surely he wasn't planning on running off? "Willie let me help you. I'll walk you to the clinic, or get a stretcher--"

"No." Nothing could have been grimmer than the expression in his face then. As if his flesh had been cast with grey ash that darkened his eyes and pulled at his mouth. "No clinic."

David did this sometimes. Refused all help and aid, no matter how badly he'd cut up his arm, or sliced up his pantlegs and knees. She'd offered many a time to sew the pants or patch the hole or bandage the cuts, but there was nothing for it but that he'd wipe off the dust with the back of a grimy hand and insist on walking into the Great House under his own power. Sometimes she felt he did it for the shock value, so that his aunt would have a stern, New England fit about it, or even, perhaps unknown even to himself, to move his stern, New England father to sympathy. Enough sympathy where a father might fold his son in his arms and bestow a kiss and a cuddle. David wasn't too far old to want it, and while she didn't think Willie wanted that, quite, he definitely was being very hard on himself. And bleeding, even as she watched, a large blossom of red was growing around the side of his shirt.

"Then you should let me help you, we can get something at the clinic, or, or the drugstore, you--"

"No." And just like David, he wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of grime, hard black against the pale of his cheek.

"You should let me," she said, the warning in her voice that would have alerted David to the fact that she considered the matter quite serious. "Or I will have to tell Mr. Collins."

That got his attention. He flung his head back, eyes flickering silver in the sunlight, and she could see the word form there, in his brain, even though he would never, ever say it to her.

_Bitch._

After a moment of shock, she realized she'd betrayed him with one sentence, without even realizing it. Of anything she might have done to him, he would have borne any of it, all of it. Anything but that. Anything but turning him in to Barnabas. His job was all, it was _all_ , and she was, at that moment, detrimental to that. Maybe she deserved the epithet.

He turned away, ducking his head, swallowing the thought, along with a huge gulp of air. Rocked back on his heels, seeming to grab for the air with his hands.

She reached for him. "Willie, you're dripping."

Then she heard him gasp, "Ah, damn." And watched him collapse to one knee, hard, in the sharp gravel. Bending to him, she pulled him to his feet, thinking only how heavy he was, how cold, even in the warmth of the day. Not thinking about the fact that her arms were around him, or that his hands were splayed on her waist, one of them slipping upwards towards her breast, or that his breath, smelling of coffee, was ragged in her ear. He seemed to let himself rest against her for only a moment, and she thought she could hear him thinking. 

"Willie," she said to him, hurried, almost whispering. "I'm sorry. I would never tell Mr. Collins, you know that. It was wrong of me to say that. Let me help you, I won't tell him. I'll get something from the pharmacy at the clinic, and clean you up. Get some towels to wipe the car seat. He'll never know, I'll never tell him. I would never let you lose your job, never."

"My job," he said, mumbling. He pulled away from her to lean against the car, looking into the driver's side, his head dipping down. "Yeah, I've fucked up the leather seat alright."

Vicki didn't think he realized he'd just sworn in front of her, but she refused to take offence at it. He wasn't talking to her, but to himself. Lining up the problems in front of him, as he must often have done at the Old House, one after the other, in preparation for solving them.

"Willie." She barely touched him, but his head snapped around so he could look directly at her. "Let me help. You've been so kind to me, please. I _want_ to help."

He stared at her, his sea blue eyes fogged over. He seemed to be studying her, as if for one long moment calculating the cost of her kindness. Then, his shoulders sagged. "Alright," he said, as if defeated. "Go get, go get it. I'll wait--"

"Go and sit over there," she said. "Can you make it? Behind the trees, no one will see--" For it seemed to want to be a secret, what had happened to him, even without him really saying. Not only should Barnabas not know, the world should not know, or ever find out. As if his clumsiness, and the lack of attention to his surroundings would make him the talk of the town and be the ruin of him. She'd known several girls in town who were less careful with their reputations.

"O-okay," he said.

She went around the car to grab her purse; she had some money left from her paypacket, of course there should be no evidence on Willie that Barnabas might discover, no funds that couldn't go unaccounted for to his boss. "You'll be okay, you aren't going to faint or anything?"

"Yeah," he grunted, a flash of his palm as he turned toward the picnic bench waving her away.

That was it. She raced into the clinic and into the pharmacy where she bought what she needed, medical tape, squares of gauze, a jug of clean water, and some antibacterial cream. Mentioned in passing to the cashier about her brother who needed the supplies and raced out again, toting the paper bag on one arm. She hoped there would be no argument about the funding of the first aid, but felt she could insist on it, this time.

When she reached Willie, it was starting to get a little cooler, at least it felt that way in the little copse of trees. Brilliant overhead, all colors of red and gold and burnt orange. It was like the woods she had wanted to stop at before, when Willie had insisted no, they could not possibly, looking almost as pale then as he did now. She put the brown paper bag on the table next to his slumped head, and cast a look around. There was no one, it was probably smack in the middle of the lunch hour, and while anyone might enjoy an outdoor meal, the fact that there wasn't already someone doing just that told her that there wouldn't be. They were safe.

"Willie," she said, touching his hand gently. "Can you take off your shirt for me? I've got some water here to clean off the blood."

For a moment he was still. She saw his jaw move, tensing, then relaxing. Then he undid the buttons one by one, and peeled the garment off, as she'd seen men do in the movies, flexing both their shoulders to undress all at once, rather than slipping one arm out at a time. Exposing the white skin of his back, the bruises along one shoulder, and the thin white scar, a mark, perhaps, from some scrape he'd gotten into during his younger, wilder days. She took the shirt from him and laid it on the table, not gasping at the marks that criss-crossed his back, and the rough, raw flesh that was still oozing. The wire seemed to have cut deeper in some places than in others, and it was the deep spots that had been rubbed raw somehow. By his shirt? His jacket? Some sort of exertion he thought he was capable of? She couldn't ask. It would be rude, and anyway, she didn't think she would get an answer. Any answer she might get would have to be for a question that was absolutely necessary.

"This might sting," she said, pouring water onto one of the gauze squares. A useless thing to say, surely Willie knew how much plain cold water would sting, even on a small cut. Better than soap and water, soap which she had none, nor iodine either. David hated the stuff, and, imagining that Willie did too, she'd found the cream, which did not sting. 

Three main places seemed the worst. Under his shoulders, near his waist, and one slice that seemed to have cut under his ribs more than once.

"What kind of wire was this?"

"Bailing," he said, not hesitating. As if he'd been waiting for her to ask just that question. The answer came out through gritted teeth, leaving her to wonder what need he would have had for bailing wire in the Old House.

"I'll hurry."

Goose bumps were raising his skin around the cuts, and she poured water and wiped it away as fast as was careful. There was no infection as far as she could see, all that was needed was some sort of covering to keep the wounds from opening up, as they had done in the past. 

"When did this happen, Willie?"

"Coupla days ago," he said, lowering his head into his arms. The rest of his statement came out muffled. "Guess I didn't realize how bad, ya know? Can't see back there."

That made sense. She spread the ointment on each and every slice, using the side of her thumb, going in one direction. Even David didn't like to sit still for first aid, no matter how bad the hurt, nor how gentle her hands. As Willie was being just as mulish, in his way, speed was, she knew, critical. Otherwise, he was liable to throw her off and march away, insisting he was fine. His color was coming back, and she pushed the jug of water towards him.

"Take some," she said, "it'll help you feel less faint."

"Ain't gonna faint," he snorted, lifting his head. He didn't look back at her, but she could tell, when he turned his head, that he wanted to know, as she stood behind him, exactly where she was standing. 

Some of the water had slid down his back to be absorbed by the waist of his pants. He wasn't wearing a belt, she noticed, and her eyes caught the edge of his underwear. The elastic band was frayed where it touched his skin, and stained, it seemed, with blood from his back. The bloodstain was fairly fresh, so he must not know, otherwise, why would he put on underwear that was stained? She decided not to mention it to him. He was liable, again, to run off, and while she couldn't stop him, she was not up to convincing him to stay.

He was drinking the water as she finished. 

"I'll tape some bandages on the worst of it, to keep it from bleeding through. If you need help taking them off--"

He swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his bare hand. "I'll manage." Dismissive. Certain. His voice was stronger now. There was no way he was going to show up on the doorstep of the Great House for any type of assistance. When she was done here, today, that would be the last she would hear of it, she was certain. 

The taping went quickly. Three large gauze squares taped in various patches across his back with the medical tape. She had to tear through the tape with her teeth, and it was tough, she almost bit her own lip. As she patted the tape down, she heard him grunt. 

"What?"

"Feels--feels better already." He twitched his shoulders. Then, with a little humming sound, his voice softened. "Thank you, Vicki."

"You sit here and put on your shirt," she said, gathering the remainder of the items and putting them back in the paper bag. "I'll go wipe out the car."

"No, I'll do that," he said, sharp, finally turning his head to look at her.

"You," she said, making her voice stern, "will put on your shirt. I will wipe the seat of the Jaguar. Then you will drive us back to Collinwood."

A moment of silence followed this remark, as the fluid cool air floated down with the leaves as they tumbled, slowly, one by one, from their branches. A little fiery rain, just as she liked it, smooth, and in perfect focus. Barnabas was right, as he usually was. There was nothing like a New England autumn. Except that this one, as beautiful and fragile as it was, was forever marked by the blood on Willie's back. Somehow, she'd been able to make him let her take care of him. Somehow, she'd come very close to alienating him forever, but had managed not to. Considering the fact that she'd practically hated him on sight when she first knew him, the fact that she was, now, very concerned that he continued to accept her as his friend, and maybe even like her in return, didn't feel as odd as it should have.

She walked over to the Jaguar and cleaned up the damage. She kept her mind focused on her task as she used the last of the gauze pads to wipe the length of the driver's seat. The leather had been treated with something, apparently, as the drying blood came up easily and her last swipe across it left no trace. She crumpled the used gauze and threw it away in the paper bag. They could get rid of the evidence on the highway back to Collinsport, and it would be--

Turning around, she was face to face with Willie. Fully dressed now, shirt tucked in, the only evidence that anything had occurred the dirty streak along the side of his face. She could smell his sweat as the wind cast it toward her, leaves tumbling down from the tops of the trees settling around his shoulders like bits of flame and burnished lace against his gold hair. A moment then, as they looked at each other, even the pores of his skin coming into focus as if a pane of glass had been removed from between them. One of the leaves landed in his hair, and she reached up and brushed it away with the tips of her fingers. And saw a flicker of that _look_ in his eyes, for all he seemed so tired. She wished she could remember where she'd seen it before. 

"Have you eaten anything today, Willie?" she asked. "We could get something before we head back."

The question brought less than the reaction she was expecting. If anything he winced at the thought, closing his eyes for a long moment before opening them to regard her with that slow seriousness that she'd come to know from him.

"If it's all the same to you, Miss Vicki," he said, his voice even, "no. I'd like to take you straight to the garage. If it's all the same to you."

It wasn't all the same to her. She wanted to feed him up good, as Mrs. Johnson would say, get something hot inside of him and watch the color come back to his cheeks. Give him an excuse to wash up and relax. To sit across from him and watch him feel lazy, giving her that grin with his lush mouth and wait for it to turn into a full blown smile. 

___Mercy._

Willie was right. They should head back, and directly too, before any other wayward thoughts skipped into her brain. She had to put it off to the sunshine and the crisp air, and the slant of the light through the trees that cast his face half in shadow and lit up his eyes like sapphires.

Yes, they should head back right away.

"Are you alright to drive?" she heard herself ask. Knowing that her voice was the slightest bit faint, hoping that he didn't notice. 

"Yeah," he said. Nodded, looking at the ground. "I'll be okay."

Then he stepped away, to let her pass and slung himself into the driver's seat as fast, it seemed, as he could. She made herself walk around the car and get in, tucking her skirts underneath her legs, wedging her purse near her feet, and strapped herself in. 

"Okay?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you," she replied. She wanted to say something else, but did not quite know what. Wouldn't be sensible anyway, to try and articulate an emotion only half formed, and, for that, totally inappropriate and which could only lead to trouble. Barnabas was not right. Could not be.

The drive back to the garage, the best in town, late of Bangor, Maine, was made in silence, although he seemed to be feeling better. Better enough that he made the car go so fast that the trees along the roadside were a blur. She looked over at the speedometer, and then looked away. The number was very high, but Willie seemed to be absorbed by the pull of the engine, and she let it go. Perhaps it would take his mind off his back till he could get home and lie down. Then, when they arrived in Collinsport at the garage, even much sooner than expected, they discovered that, in the best Collins' manner, the bill had already been paid for, and the most effort she had to make was to arrange the car keys in her palm.

Only as he was about to drive off, back to Collinwood with Roger Collins' favorite toy, was she able to stop him by touching his arm.

"Willie."

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

He didn't ask what for. Maybe he didn't want to know. But he had the look of a man who had given away the combination to his soul. She held it in her hands even now, and while she couldn't understand how his job could mean _so_ much to him, she was willing to guard his secret as if it were her own. 

"You're welcome," he said. And got into the Jaguar, started it, and made his way out of the parking lot, onto the street, and headed back to the estate. 

Tired. That's what she was. The day was only half done and she was ready to call it over. 

*

The air of the Great House seemed to stir itself around her, all aflutter, as it usually was when Barnabas Collins came to call. He'd been most specific from the first as he hung up his coat, forward, even, asking only for Victoria so as to inquire after her. Tea, served by a silent but aflutter Mrs. Johnson, was on a tea stand in front of them now, one cup of three taken by Mrs. Stoddard who said that she preferred to drink hers in the privacy of the back study. 

Vicki sipped from her cup, the thinnest cool china, the smooth tea made even smoother by cream. Barnabas held his cup, small in the palm of his large hands, but did not drink.

"I'm glad to hear that your visit to the doctor went so well, Miss Winters. Your health is most important."

She thought he meant to say that health in general was important but it came out as more personal than that. It had been directed at her, as if his most crucial waking thought had been about her and whether she fared well or ill. Such was his way, always his way, smooth. Sitting across from her in a double-breasted suit, the fine shirt with nary a wrinkle, and that blood red tie. Hair combed neatly down, dark in the electric light. He always dressed as though for a meeting, and the flattery of it being a meeting with _her_ that he'd dressed for made her feel charmed all over again.

"Yes," she said. "It's only once a year, but better safe than sorry."

"And the drive, on this pleasant day? I hope you were able to enjoy it."

The memory of the scenery whipping by their window when Willie had cranked the engine up to 70 miles per hour, just to see if he could, forgetting completely that she was in the passenger seat, made her smile. "Mr. Collins' Jaguar was more car than I am used to, but the seats were so comfortable, the drive went by in a flash."

"And Willie? Was he as attentive to your needs as he ought to have been?"

Nodding, she looked at her hands, balancing her teacup on the hill of her knee. "You know, Mr. Collins, I felt as well looked after as if it had been you with me."

"Oh?"

Startled, she looked up. His eyebrows were raised, and she had the odd feeling that what she had said was not the right thing. And it occurred to her, maybe for the first time, maybe for the hundredth, if she'd been attentive enough to pay mind to her own internal instincts, that Barnabas Collins was jealous. Maybe not of Willie specifically, but of the time the young man was able to spend with her. Barnabas was so often involved with his business concerns that many of the kindnesses he'd shown to her had been through the hands of others. Mostly Willie's hands, which had delivered roses and charming notes, ancient leather-bound books, or fine leather gloves to keep her ladylike skin, as Barnabas had said to her the evening after they'd been delivered, _from roughing in the weather_. Willie's hands had also redone the secretary that now sat in her room, and it had been Willie's hands that had driven her away from the uncomfortable shoulder of the road during that blizzard. Barnabas was so seldom on hand when she needed him, even if, in the aftermath of any event, he was all concern and attentiveness. Yes, he was jealous and that was the fact. 

"You know, Mr. Collins, I have been thinking."

"And what is that?" The dark eyebrows came down, and now his attention was fully focused on her.

"About what you'd said. About Willie considering himself my protector."

A light sparked in his eyes. Now he was really interested, which was odd, since that would mean that he'd not really been interested up until that point. "Indeed. Would you care to elaborate, Miss Winters? I must confess that I remember that particular conversation with regrettable vagueness."

"Well," she began. "I meant what I said. I was as well taken care of as if you had been there. Willie was as much a gentleman as you would have been. Not, you know, as…" Her voice trailed off as she searched for just the right word. "Not as…formal or polished, but kind, just the same. So I would have to agree with you. He does consider himself my protector. But you really can't fault him for that because it always is on your behalf."

She waited a moment, taking a sip of her tea, wondering at herself at this tactic. Not something she usually tried, though she'd seen Miss Carolyn do it on many an occasion at the Blue Whale, or in one of those cafés along the waterfront where she liked to drag Vicki when she was feeling trendy. Her heart was pounding a little, as Carolyn's surely must have been from time to time. But the other woman had always waited it out, and Vicki swallowed slowly, determined to wait it out too. 

"And?" Barnabas was staring at her. Expecting more.

"And…what?"

"What about the other?"

"The other? I don't understand."

He put his teacup on the stand and folded his hands in his lap. Sat back and regarded her. "What about the other issue I raised with you. About Willie considering himself your suitor. Did you see any evidence of that?"

With a little laugh, she took another sip of her tea. Really, she did not know how Carolyn did this for more than a minute or two. But she'd wanted to see if Barnabas was just fibbing about not remembering a conversation they'd had only yesterday. And she was proved right, he had been.

"Willie does not consider himself my suitor," she said, debating whether or not to treat herself to one of the store-bought cakes that were arranged on a plate next to the teapot. 

"And how do you know this for certain? My dear, you must really understand something. Willie's mind does not work like yours or mine. His temperament is easily excited, he tends to nervousness, and above all, he has an imagination quite untamed by any mature restraint whatsoever."

"Alright then," she said, firming her lips together, determined not to have any cake, not even a little bit. "Then answer this, if you would, I can't imagine that he considers himself my suitor and might say it to you till I'm blue. What evidence do you have to imagine that he does?"

And in a voice so smooth and deep, he replied, "It is the way he looks at you, my dear."

Something flickered in her mind. A warm day. Sunlight streaming down. Not through autumn leaves, but, instead, on a hillside that smelt of the sea and the promise of spring. "And I," she made herself say, her voice shaky, "would say that you're the one with an unrestrained imagination. Besides, he has never given me any gifts."

"One does not have to give gifts to be a suitor," said Barnabas, almost snapping.

It became clear now. Springtime. The slope of the hill below Widow's Hill. The singular, lone lilac tree on the Collins' estate. All in bloom, a trumpet of flowers of purple and pink and white. And Willie, sweaty in his t-shirt, smeared with dust from the tree, petals in his hair. The knees of his pants soaked with mud. Tight pants, she recalled now. The _look_ that had followed her all the way down the hill. Blue-eyed, as if something burned him from within. And the pants, which she had seen when her eyes had cast themselves down just as he was handing her the coatful of blossoms, that had grown even tighter at the doorway to the Great House.

___Thank you, Willie._

_You're welcome, Vicki. Any time._

The backs of their hands had touched, almost not touching at all, it had been so brief, and his skin had felt as hot as the sun. There was something charged between them, as if he would devour her if he could, and her body reacted as if there was nothing it would like better than to _be_ devoured. The nerves along the backs of her legs, between her thighs, rippled, and with her heart beating, she knew how dangerous it _could_ become. Had left Willie post haste, going upstairs to arrange the lilacs in her room, concentrating on that and nothing else till the moment in the slanting sun of the port-cochiereof the Great House was vanquished by their scent. 

And now. Now. Barnabas Collins was right. And he was wrong, too. In a way, he was both. Willie wanted her, in a way that a man did who did not dare approach closer to test that want. But not in a hand-pawing, panting way, the way the patrons of the Blue Whale sometimes did with Carolyn, especially during that time when she'd been dancing each wild night away under the tutelage of Buzz Hackett. They'd known she'd been available and willing, and her manners in his presence, as if to prove something far distant from the dance floor, it seemed now, had alerted the basest of men that their advances might actually be accepted. Willie had never, not since he'd gone to work for Barnabas, been like that. Before, yes. The sweaty manhandling had started from the first day, almost, and had it been _then_ , Victoria could have agreed with Barnabas. But it was _now_ , and Willie's courtship, if she could even call it that, had been more of a love from afar, no matter how close to her he might be standing. Or lust from afar, if she would call it anything, it must, truthfully, be that. But a polite lust that only used sea-blue eyes to make gentle love to her. 

"So he has given you gifts," said Barnabas, breaking into her thoughts as if he'd shattered the glass around her.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You are blushing, Miss Winters, if I may be so bold as to say so."

Willie _had_ given her a gift, that early spring day. Bought with his own efforts rather than by cash from his pocket, but a gift that she'd treasured for all that. The scent from the lilac tree had lingered in her mind far longer than the blossoms themselves, and Mrs. Johnson had cleared the bowls and vases when the flowers had begun to grow brown. Still, she'd been weeks finding a petal here or a twig there, after having, though she would never have confessed it to anyone, spread the blossoms around her room like a blanket. Tucked in her pillowcase, under the sheets, in her sock drawer, everywhere. Hidden like secret notes of scent, bringing to her, like flickering notes in her mind's eye, only good memories from the Foundling Home, the bright days at Collinwood, and the sunny hillside where would forever linger the memory of the enchantment of the day Willie had shown her the lilac tree.

"Miss Winters?"

She felt as if she were stumbling even though she was sitting perfectly still, her hands in her lap, the teacakes at a safe distance, the tea in her cup gone cold. That Willie considered himself one of her suitors was certainly true, but while he might look at her as though he wanted to undress her, unlike in the early days, he would, now, never, ever presume to lay even the smallest finger on her, no matter how much he desired her. She knew that as well as she knew her own name. The fact remained that Barnabas Collins believed the former, did not understand the latter, and might, if his dark expression were anything to go by, just be inclined to fire Willie over the matter. She had to disabuse him of even the merest notion about it, and steer him so far away from it that no whisper of that day, that glorious sunny day during which she had felt the stirrings of spring, had seen that stirring reflected in a young man's eyes, would ever reach him. Willie wanted to keep his job, and whatever she could do to help him, she would.

"Why are you blushing, Miss Winters, if not for the fact that you have come to the realization that Willie does indeed consider himself your suitor? That he has acted upon it?"

She found herself placing the cup on the tea table and standing. Walked over to the fire and stood there to stare at the flames, the color of them so like the color of the leaves that had drifted into Willie's hair that she was silenced for a moment. Barnabas appeared at her side, his broad shoulders blocking the lamplight from the sideboard, the darkness of his suit, even, seeming to absorb the light, the heat, from the flames. 

One of his hands reached out to touch her, then withdrew to linger, as if he wanted to touch her but didn't dare.

"Miss Winters, you are trembling. What have I said to upset you? Please, you will let me make amends, but you must tell me." 

She was trembling, and realized it was from fear, flickering in her belly, and maybe it was from the lie she was about to tell, the outrageous lie (and she being so very, very bad at it), or maybe it was because Willie's future might be based upon that lie. She didn't know. Maybe it didn't matter. But she could do this. She'd watched Carolyn any number of times, maybe even dozens. Hundreds. Lie so sweetly, twirling her fingers in her hair, well manicured nails glinting, those eyes of hers dangerous pools of blue, and the man walking into that particular trap never even saw it coming. And Barnabas.

Vicki looked up at him. Looked for it. 

___Their eyes are soft,_ Carolyn had told her. _When they want it so bad, they want you, and they are putty. Watch. I'll show you._

And show her she had, setting up men and knocking them down with the expertise of a well-trained man at arms. Barnabas' eyes were definitely soft, vulnerable, caressing her as he stood there, within arm's reach, but not touching her. Not moving forward, but, rather, waiting.

"Miss Winters?"

She took a breath. "I'm sorry, Mr. Collins, but…you can't say that you think he's my suitor unless you think, at the same time, that I've actually considered, that I've actually _accepted_ his advances." She stepped boldly away, then turned to look at him, the distance of the rug between them separating him from even thinking about touching her. "It doesn't matter that I've told you he's done nothing like that. In your mind," she paused, trying to look astonished and hurt at the same time, "in your mind, I've accepted him. Accepted Willie Loomis. Of _all_ people."

He blinked several times, his mouth opening up to say something his brain was too confused to supply. Stumping Barnabas Collins was never something she'd seen anyone do, but Carolyn had told her time and time again, _when they're poleaxed, that's when you have to move in. For the kill._

At the time, she'd chided Carolyn for her lack of discretion, privately thinking, how… _fast_ Carolyn was, especially during that time when Mrs. Stoddard had been engaged to Jason McGuire, but not saying it. Still and all, the advice and the expertise that Carolyn seemed to possess would come in handy, and pushing the issue home, now, while Barnabas stood on the carpet and him, without a thing to say, was essential. 

"Willie Loomis," she said, her voice quite chilly, "may be polite and kind, the perfect gentleman in all of his interactions with me, or anyone in this household, or the village, even. He might be the best servant you ever had, the _best_ ," here she emphasized the word, "craftsman in all of Maine, but he is still, after all, only a handyman. As good and kind as he may have been to me, with no education nor any love of learning or books, what on earth do you imagine that we would talk about? We have nothing in common, he and I, and yet you, for some reason, continue to insist that not only is he courting me, but that I would actually be willing to accept that courtship."

She waited. Listened to the fire hiss over the wood, and the clock in the hall, ticking off the minute that stretched out between them. And watched as Barnabas Collins took a mental step backwards and rearranged his thoughts in his mind. The expression on his face seemed to move in slow motion from one jumbled thought to the next. He was a good man, she knew that, and his courtship of her had always been sweet and slow and she felt easy with him. But he had gone too far, it made her feel vindicated to realize that he _had_ , truly, crossed the invisible line from his casual but insistent involvement in her life to making direct comments that were not only untrue but unfair. The fear in her belly dissolved into righteous indignation and it was with no pretense whatsoever that she crossed her arms over her chest and frowned at him.

"I think I deserve an apology, Mr. Collins. As a matter of fact, I think Willie deserves one as well. He's done nothing but follow your orders to the letter, yet you have done nothing but fling accusations at me about him. Without, one assumes, giving him, the benefit of the doubt nor the opportunity to defend himself. You have, in fact, accused both of us of having an affair behind your back."

By the time she finished, she was breathless. If that didn't sink in, she didn't think she could take it any further. Carolyn might lack the timidity that kept her from saying what she thought, but Vicki knew her own upbringing would prevent her from standing her ground if Barnabas objected any further. This was not her world, this game of taunt and threaten, that so many others seemed to occupy without even a pause. She wanted out, and quickly. Wanted her books, and the schoolroom, and David, with his irascible nature, his morning-washed face shining, belying the tricks he might be planning. She wanted the world she knew, with this one far, far behind her.

"I have insulted you," said Barnabas finally. He was deathly pale, his eyes black chips in his face. "I most humbly beg your forgiveness." His voice was flat, without emotion, yet somewhere, she thought she could hear his heart breaking. Again his hand came up, stopping mid-air, as if he feared he would be turned away most cruelly. It was then she knew how much it mattered to him.

It was too much. Truly, too much. She was nothing like Carolyn, could never be, did not want to be. Yet here she was, tormenting this poor man who wanted only to love her and who, like many a frail suitor, feared for her affections. There were only three steps between her and the davenport and by the time she sank onto it, the tears were already streaming. She could not stop them, only silence them, ducking her head, pretending she was only wiping away a thought, grateful to be sitting, knowing her knees could not have held her up another moment.

He was beside her then, propriety thrown aside as he took up her hand, damp with tears, and kissed the inside of her palm. A handkerchief, snowy white, simple linen, was carefully placed in her other hand, and his voice was a murmur in her ear. "Miss Winters, Miss Winters, oh, my dear, please. You must not upset yourself, please. It is my fault. I am as bad as a young swain in his first spring, saying such things. I should not have assumed, no, I should not have done, and it was wrong of me. Terribly wrong."

With her head still ducked down, she waited through the moment, felt his lips on her wrist, the tremor of his hand as his fingers pressed into her skin. 

"Accusations," she said, low, feeling the darkness bubbling inside of her, "are never kind, particularly those without merit."

He took his hand and lifted her chin, as if she were a child instead of a grown woman. She looked at him through lashes that were still damp with tears, feeling as if she'd lost something very precious to her. He took the handkerchief, unused, from her hand and blotted her cheeks, one soft pat, then another. The serious, grave expression, the thin line of his mouth told her that he felt, as well, that all was lost. So…perhaps it wasn't? If he cared. If he cared _that_ much, then perhaps it could be saved.

"Miss Winters," he said, his voice careful and slow. "You look at me with those stern, grey eyes, and I am lost. But I would rather be lost in those eyes than adrift in the world without them. I have been dishonorable in both thought and deed, and the merit I thought my accusations had were of my own--" He stopped, and took his hand away from her face, instead gathering up her hands in both of his own. Still clutching the handkerchief, still sitting quite close. "Those accusations were base and low and you are utterly undeserving of them."

She waited, not pulling her hands out of his, but not responding either.

And watched him swallow. 

"And Willie," he said to her. "You are right. I have done him a disservice as well, considering all his loyalty and hard work. It is my--my jealousy, I will admit it to you. I am so busy with my business affairs, and send him to you in my name, you can understand that I imagined--that I created in my own mind, the worst of all possible situations? Can you understand that? I am but a man, and imperfect, when the only thing that mattered to me was gaining your affections. And here I've gone and fouled the entire matter, but please, please tell me, not beyond repair."

She gave his hands an answering squeeze and watched his eyes light up with joy. 

"I accept your apology. I hope you will forgive _me_ for being so upset."

"Miss Winters," he said, warm, leaning forward. The kiss was coming, and she found she quite welcomed it, her body and mind, all worked up somehow, by the ardent conversation.

"And Willie, you will apologize to him, as well?"

He froze. Her hands in his, their knees touching, his face inches away, his cool scent welcome in the suddenly warm room. Then he blinked. "But of course. Consider it done. Even a servant such as Willie should not be falsely accused without recourse."

She lowered her head and closed her eyes. Nodded, the slow anticipation gathering itself along the back of her neck. Felt the soft caress of his hand along her jaw as he tipped her head up. And then the cool, shivery feel of his lips upon her own. Exhaled the heat as she breathed, allowing the ripple to dance through her stomach and down her front. Up through her breasts, where a small shower of stars rose up her throat.

"Oh," she said, as Barnabas pulled away. She opened her eyes. "Oh, my."

His hands on hers were tight, and she did not want him to let go. Of course he would, of course he _should_. But not just yet. And she didn't care who walked into the room.

*

Winter was a showcase for Miss Carolyn, it was easy to see. As they strolled down the sidewalk along Water Street, Victoria could see the many pairs of masculine eyes that were caught and held by the blazing red wool coat and the fetching rabbit-hair hood that was the exact shade of white to set off her rosy cheeks and silver blonde hair. Feeling rather like a second-hand governess in her dull but sensible camel hair coat, Victoria trudged where Carolyn glided, and shivered where Carolyn sparkled like ice crystals. Carried her sturdy black purse by the handles, fingers kept warm by dark brown gloves, touched the edge of her dark green tam-o-shanter, and tried not to think about it. 

It didn't help that she was just getting over a cold. The chill that Willie Loomis had feared she would take just last week had pounced on her with a vengeance. She'd spent a week in bed, cooped indoors, suffering from too much chicken soup, her days punctuated by David's earnest attempts to amuse her with card tricks, and missing the company of Barnabas Collins. 

"We can go by the Old House on the way home," Carolyn was saying. "But only if you'll stop looking glum and try on some shoes with me."

A governess's paypacket only went so far, even for a governess who worked for the mighty Collins clan. Still, she couldn't complain. An additional afternoon off after a week of being ill and unable to tend to David was more than most governesses would get. Not to mention the dark dress of aubergine wool that Mrs. Stoddard had brought her only the other day. _On sale,_ she'd said, _and I just knew it would suit you so_. There'd been no price tag on it anywhere, though Vicki remembered seeing a dress just like it among the cashmere sweaters and scarves in the window of Heisman's Dry Goods in Bangor. And nothing on Heisman's ever went on sale.

"I'm sure he's out of town on business," said Vicki, skirting a hillock of ice as they crossed in front of an alley. "Otherwise…well, he must be very busy."

"Or he'd have come by to pay a call on you, is that it?" 

Carolyn was often canny when it came to matters of the heart. She paused, her hand on the doorlatch to the coffee shop, the door open enough to let the moist draft of warm drink float out to them on the chill air. "You should wear that dress mother bought you," she said. "And _then_ visit him. Not in that brown sweater."

Carolyn didn't mean to be unkind, of course not. Born into money, it never occurred to her that others did not struggle under the weight of a regular and hefty allowance as she did.

"I _like_ this sweater," said Vicky, her jaw pushing out. "And it's warm."

"It is warm," Carolyn agreed, "and it was cheap. I know you Vicki. You'd look good in a burlap sack, but it doesn't hurt to gild the lily, you know."

Carolyn pulled the door open. "I'll get us a table. Looks like you have a friend." The smirk in the blue eyes caused Vicki to look around without thinking. It was Willie, walking down the street towards her, bundled up in his pea coat and woolen cap, his red scarf dangling down almost to his knees. He looked like he wanted to talk to her, his eyes were meeting hers as he walked closer, breath puffing out before him in the still, cold air. She was glad Carolyn had gone inside; if Willie were to be exposed to even a fraction of the teasing Vicki'd endured, he would blush redder than his scarf. And probably never speak to her again. 

"Miss Vicki," he said, dipping his head in greeting as he stopped in front of her. 

"Hello, Willie," she said, smiling. "How have you been?"

"Good, Miss Vicky, real good. And you?"

"I had a cold," she said. "And you know how Mrs. Stoddard is. She wouldn't let me out of bed, and even had the doctor brought in. I was in bed all week."

By his expression she realized that of course he wouldn't know how Mrs. Stoddard was nor what it would be like to be fussed over by an entire household, because when he'd been sick at the Great House, no one had wanted him there anyway. And now when Willie was sick, he probably tended to himself, or maybe Barnabas helped out when he was not away on business. There was no way to tell, nor would it be polite to ask, though she figured he did not have many options when he fell ill.

"I thought you looked a little, uh, I mean, you know, you--well, pale."

A little laugh escaped her and she reached out a gloved hand to lay it on the wool of his coat. "Thank you, Willie. I've been existing on Mrs. Johnson's chicken soup, and you know what that's like."

There was that light in his eyes, the one that reminded her of the time of the lilacs, even as he shifted his shoulder slightly to move it away from her hand. It sparked something in her stomach, she didn't like him thinking that she was fast or that she meant to hurt him. But why was he doing it? Did he, perish the thought, dislike her?

"We're going in for some coffee and pastries, won't you join us?"

"You and Miss Carolyn?" he asked, his voice rising. He really looked like he was thinking it over, eyes shifting from hers as if trying to remember some very specific instructions from a politeness manual. "Um, I don't think so, but listen, hey--" He stopped, a little out of breath, though he had not moved. "Um, I gotta message for you. Barnabas said to say, he said--" Another pause as he rubbed the back of his neck and then settled his cap back down over his ears. "Barnabas said to say, that if I saw you, I was to say that he and I talked and everything is okay now."

"And so the two of you talked?" she asked.

Another pause while he seemed to work something over in his mind. Then he nodded. "Yeah, he said that--he said to tell you that we talked it over and reached an understanding." Another nod. "Yeah, an understanding."

"An understanding," she repeated, looking at him. Bundled up against the cold, he showed no signs of the injury he had suffered from his fall almost two weeks ago, nor would he, she assumed, welcome any mention of it. The icy street on which they now stood was a far cry from a sun-warmed corner of a hospital garden where he had stripped off his shirt and bared his skin and his soul, and now looked at her with eyes blue as sapphires in the snow, the expression there telling her that he had neither forgotten nor felt at ease with the memory of what had passed between them.

"You know, Willie, I gave Mr. Collins quite a piece of my mind that day, but not," she hastened to add as she saw him look a little shocked, "not about what happened in Bangor. No, it was about the accusations he had been making."

"Accusations?"

"Yes, about you and me." She shook her head, her eyes never leaving Willie's. "That's why he apologized to you, like I asked him."

Now he was completely bewildered. "Ap-apologized?" 

It was like talking to an echo. 

"Yes," she said with a snap, "you know. About how he kept thinking you were courting me. He kept repeating it as if he really believed it. So I told him how insulting it was, because what he was actually doing was accusing us of carrying on behind his back. So I wanted an apology for both of us. Otherwise, what do you and Barnabas have an understanding about?"

Willie stood there a moment, seeming oblivious to the cold draft of wind whistling around their ears, or the commotion in the street as a fire truck went by, or even the passersby on the street who snorted their dissatisfaction and disapproval that they had to step into the street to get around the likes of Willie Loomis. Something was clicking in his eyes, and she was about to get the feeling that Barnabas had not, after all, apologized as promised, when he dipped his head. Slow, as if he were recalling something from long ago.

"Yeah…he was pretty shook up about it. Guess he musta felt he was justified somehow, and when he realized, you know, what that said about you, well, he kinda lost it."

"And then he apologized."

"Ye-yeah, sure, yeah, he did," said Willie, looking over her shoulder up the street, and then at the doorway to the coffee shop. "Hey, look, Carolyn's waitin' for ya, guess you bettah go in, huh?"

She didn't move. Not even as he reached around her to pull open the door for her. His wool-clad arm brushed up against her, and she caught the scent of his shaving soap amidst the warm rush of air that swirled around her from the open coffee shop door.

"And Mr. Collins is not one, I take it, who apologizes easily to someone who works for him?" she asked.

Willie stopped and straightened up. His arm was half around her still, as if he were pausing mid-embrace, his hand on the doorknob, and somewhere in the back of her mind, Victoria knew that Carolyn could see all of this. That in fact, the whole town could. But what mattered more, just then, was the closeness of the moment. The strand of hair that peeked out from the brim of his wool knit cap. The dense, cloudy blue of his eyes as he regarded her as he might a low, warm fire that he dared not approach. And that neck where the scarf parted, pulsing with a heartbeat she almost imagined she could catch the scent of. The puff of frosty air that streamed away from his face, stirring the perfume of his hair, and that full, serious mouth slightly moist as though fresh from her kiss. Her heart was pounding. How could she be thinking these thoughts?

"No," said Willie, more icy air swirling away from him.

"No?" she asked, confused. "No, what?"

He shrugged, his arm moving against her as he did it. "What you said. Just now. Barnabas does not like to apologize to someone who works for him, but, sometimes, he does. Okay?"

"Okay, Willie," she said, turning into the doorway. Then she paused, taking the door from him, and watched him shove his hands into his pockets. He wore no gloves, she noticed, and they were red with cold. But she had to go now, before her mind wandered any further and Barnabas' accusations turned into truth. But they couldn't, could they. Willie was not the sort of man she would ever, ever consider seeing beyond the social circles that they both existed in. In fact, if he had not worked for Barnabas, she never would have given him a moment's acknowledgement. Certainly not on a public street like this in the middle of the day. 

"Thank you, Willie," she said, in the coolest tones she could muster. "Thank you for delivering the message. And could you tell Mr. Collins for me that I look forward to seeing him? I've missed him this past week, could you tell him that?"

Now there was a fire doused. Willie looked like she'd slapped him. But he nodded and tried to move his mouth into a smile, and cast his eyes up the street as if he had somewhere to go. "Yeah, I'll tell him. You take care, Miss Vicki, an' I'll see you 'round, okay?"

"Goodbye, Willie. Stay warm."

She felt she couldn't get into the coffee shop fast enough, but even though the door swung closed behind her, the wall was framed in glass, and she could very clearly see him walk past the shop, head down, hands in pockets, skirting the couple coming his way even to the point of stepping in the gutter. No, he was not the kind of man she would want to date at _all_.

**Author's Note:**

> It is my secret dream that one day Willie and Victoria will run off together, leaving Collinwood far, far behind them.
> 
>  
> 
> [ If you're interested in more of my writing, you can check out my m/m historical romances. I've written five books in the series, and am currently working on the sixth book. ](http://www.christinaepilz.com/)


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